Over 68m Filipinos fully vaccinated, says official

MANILA: More than 68 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated since the government rolled out its nationwide inoculation programme against the coronavirus pandemic on March 1, 2021.

This was revealed on Monday by Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje who said the figure accounted for 76 per cent of the 90 per cent targeted to be fully inoculated before President Rodrigo Duterte’s term is to end on June 30.

But Cabotaje, the head of the National Vaccination Operations Centre, also admited that the number of Filipinos who received their booster jabs continued to remain low.

“Those who received their first boosters totaled only 13.4 million. It is quite slow. We still have 38 million who need to get their first booster,” she told a media briefing in a mix of Filipino and English.

According to Cabotaje, all Filipinos who have received their primary series of COVID-19 vaccines are eligible to receive their booster shots. Earlier, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the health department request for a second booster intended for a particular target.

The target, she said, was the more than 700,000 healthcare frontliners like doctors and nurses; senior citizens aged 60 and above; and those with comorbidities (ailments like cancer and diabetes).

But as before, there was a low turnout since the programme started, according to Cabotaje. This also led Secretary Carlito Galvez, the vaccine czar, to propose the inclusion of overseas Filipino workers (OFWS), including seafarers, in the campaign.

Earlier, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire reported that the health department would set up COVID-19 vaccination centres in all the country’s voting sites in connection with the conduct of the national elections on Monday.

Vergeire explained: “Ater casting their ballots, the voters can go directly to the nearby vaccination sites for their primary series of COVID-19 vaccines or their booster shots. These are all for free.”