PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte emphasized Monday night, October 25, the need to ramp up the vaccination rate in various local government units (LGUs) in the country to meet the administration’s target: 50 million fully vaccinated Filipinos by the end of 2021.
Duterte said there is a need to fully vaccinate at least 50 million Filipinos to achieve population protection.
He called on local chief executives to scale up the vaccination program in their respective areas.
“I urged LGUs to come up with a more systematic and efficient way of finding out of who among your constituents have not yet been vaccinated. Please do everything to convince them to get vaccinated,” he said during his Talk to the People program Monday evening, October 25.
“We cannot reach this target if we will plateau at 400 or 500 (thousand) daily jabs,” Duterte said.
The President said there should be a non-stop vaccination program at the LGUs, stressing this will help expedite the Covid-19 vaccination program in the country.
He said the vaccination program must also reach far-flung areas in the Philippines while preserving the integrity of the vaccines.
“At ‘yung mga bakuna na nasa umabot na doon sa pinakamalayong lugar and the provincial, city and municipal health officials will take over… Ang concern ko lang naman is that they will be able to preserve the integrity of the vaccines,” Duterte said.
He said the Covid-19 vaccines must be free from contamination and must be used.
The President assured that the country has enough supply of Covid-19 vaccines.
As of October 24, the country has received a total of 97,678,340 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.
As of Monday, October 25, data from the National Covid-19 Vaccination Dashboard showed that 56,254,529 doses have already been administered nationwide, of which 30,298,860 were given as first dose and 25,955,660 as complete doses.
In the National Capital Region, 17,694,471 total doses of Covid-19 vaccines were administered: 9,307,293 as first dose and 8,387,179 as complete doses. (LMY/SunStar Philippines)