MANILA – House-to-house coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccination is a “good strategy” for inoculating more people and to reduce the crowd in vaccination sites, according to the Department of Health (DOH).
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a Laging Handa briefing that if local government units (LGUs) have the resources, they can do these house-to-house visits.
“Unang-una, masisiguro natin na hindi magkukumpul-kumpol ang mga tao. Kung mayroon mang iikot hindi na kailangang pumunta pa ang mga kababayan natin sa isang lugar para doon mag-antay mabakunahan. Pangalawa, mas maganda kasi masusuyod natin ang bahay-bahay (Firstly, we can ensure that there won’t be crowding, the public could just wait from their homes to get vaccinated. Secondly, they can identify those who were not yet able to get their shots),” she said.
“Maganda po iyang strategy na iyan if LGUs have the resources, maari po nating gawin iyan (That’s a good strategy, if LGUs have the resources, they can do that),” she added.
In Metro Manila, LGUs aim to vaccinate between 180,000 to 200,000 people across the region’s cities and lone municipality.
Vergeire believes that by doing so, the National Capital Region will be able to vaccinate 70% of its population by September.
“So ito po ay susuportahan naman ng ating national government at titingnan ho natin kung paano rin natin sila siyempre maga-guide (We support this and we are looking at how we can guide them) on how we can better do this so that it can be something that can be used for us to protect our citizens from this Delta variant,” she said.
Despite the fact that the region will be under an enhanced community quarantine from August 6 to 20, Vergeire confirmed that vaccination efforts will continue.
“So, we will have safe vaccination sites. Itutuloy pa rin natin at actually itataas po natin ang bilang ng dapat mabakunahan para po agad-agad tayo magkaroon ng protection laban sa mga variant (We will continue this and actually increase the number of vaccinees so that we can get the protection against the variant as soon as possible),” she added.
Following the threat of the highly contagious Delta variant, which has infected over 200 people in the Philippines, stricter community quarantine measures were implemented.
Vergeire stated that the DOH cannot determine that the Delta variant is presently being transmitted in the community until more evidence is gathered.
“Sa ngayon po, we have the local transmission kung saan nakikita pa po natin ang pagkaka-link ng bawat isang kaso na mayroon tayong genome sequence na positive sa isa’t isa (At present, what we have is the local transmission where we can still see the link in every case that has undergone genome sequencing),” she said.
“Darating po tayo diyan sa pagdideklara ng community transmission if we are able to provide evidence already that we cannot link these individuals to each other anymore at saka nakikita na natin na talagang kalat na iyong extent nitong variant na ito (We will declare community transmission if we can provide evidence already that we cannot link these individuals to each other anymore),” she added.
