Chasing the vaccine

ON Tuesday, I finally received my second jab of the precious vaccine against Covid-19. I got it in Muntinlupa, which is where I am a registered voter and, prior to this devastating pandemic, where I lived part-time at Big Sister’s house in the city. But like my other friends, I had registered for jabs with other local government units (LGU) or private companies. Vaccines will help protect us from Covid-19, and that is one immutable scientific fact. It won’t be Ivermectin or any other pharma substances designed for dogs.

So I thought, whichever government entity or private establishment gives me the jab first, that’s what I would take. But also, at my physician’s instructions, it should only be Pfizer or Moderna, because of their higher rate of efficacy. (And as it turns out, these are the only vaccines that a number of foreign countries accept. Now government has to scramble to give Pfizer shots to seamen and Filipino workers leaving to work abroad.)

Right off the bat, Quezon City was hell to register with. Their initial web site asked for so many proofs of my identity and address, and uploading each and every ID card quickly became unbelievably insufferable. Next came their much-derided EZ Consult app, developed by the geniuses at Zuellig Pharma which the Quezon City LGU had contracted. The app would always crash every time residents would try get a vaccination schedule.

At the same time, the Quezon City Mayor’s office had the bright idea of asking barangays to register their constituents for vaccination jabs. It was the height of a lockdown and we were being asked to leave the safety of our homes just to get a vaxx schedule?! What was the point of City Hall paying for an app in the first place?!

Then City Hall thought of developing another web site so we could register and get our vaccination schedules. It, too, was prone to error most of the time. To think, this was the largest, most densely populated city in Metro Manila, but the LGU seemed totally unprepared even for something as simply as registering residents.

What’s worse, residents could not choose which vaccine they would receive. I later found out that sometime in the course of Quezon City’s vaccination program, only those who had registered with their barangays and lived around certain hospitals could receive the Pfizer vaccine. The rest of unlucky residents and QC taxpayers like me will have had to take our chances, and most of the time, it was Sinovac on the schedule. The city also offered a few doses of Astrazeneca, which is fine unless the prospective vaccinee has diagnosed clotting issues.

At the Muntinlupa LGU, all I had to do was register my name, address and cellphone number on their web site, told them the vaccine I preferred, and that was it. I merely waited for a text from them for a schedule. I had to reschedule my initial appointment—yes, you can do that in Muntinlupa—and was given a new vaxx date. The Muncovac staff reminded me via text messages, several times in fact, about my appointment, and what to bring that day.

(It was all fine until of course that recent dreaded incident, where vaccines were spoiled because of a drop in temperature in the chiller. It’s either the fault of the mall, which hosted the LGU’S jabs, or due to neglect by the staff assigned to guard the vaccines.)

Other than that hiccup which pushed back the sked for my second jab, it was an otherwise problemfree vaccination process. I got my second jab at another mall on Tuesday and despite the long queue, the process moved along quickly. I arrived at 8 am and was done before 10 am. This included queuing, screening, taking of vital stats, a short interview of the effect of the first dose on me, the jab itself (just three minutes), and the post-jab monitoring.

I can only thank Mayor Jaime Fresnedi and his Muncovac staff, as well as all the nurses and medical personnel on duty in all the city’s vaccination centers, for the painless vaccination program.

Makati Mayor Abby Binay’s vaccination registration and scheduling was likewise simple and straightforward. I just registered via their web site, wrote in all the needed details especially this newspaper’s name and address, then a few weeks later I received a text message informing me of my vaccination schedule.

It didn’t say what vaccine I was to receive that day but by then, I already had received my first jab from Muntinlupa. I just wanted to point out that the Makati

LGU was efficient as well. By then I had already given up on the Quezon City LGU. It was too much stress just to get a schedule.

I’m pretty sure some Quezon City residents will contradict me, and will probably say they had an easy time getting their vaccination appointments and jabs. But I also have an equally good number of residents who just found the entire exercise exhausting. And when there is no common experience, which just means the LGU’S service is inconsistent. Mayor Joy Belmonte has to find a better, easier way for residents to get vaxxed. Stop reinventing the wheel, and just copy the good practices of other LGUS.

Meanwhile, kudos to the private companies which have stepped up to offer free jabs to frontliners, or are selling the vaccines they imported almost at cost. I, for one, am extremely grateful I had a lot of avenues in which to chase the vaccine.

With the Delta variant now stealthily spreading through the population, government needs to step up the vaccine importation and just jab anyone who wants them. We can’t keep opening and closing the economy because people need to work to put food on their family’s table. And LGUS have to make it almost effortless for their constituents to get the vaccines. What is needed is a no-nonsense approach to registration, scheduling and jabbing, and to minimize queueing or at least strictly implement social distancing at the lines.

Many Filipinos are ready to receive their jabs. We just need more of the vaccines—now.