MANILA, Philippines — The government is considering conducting house-to-house vaccination for vulnerable Filipinos who cannot to go to designated vaccination centers, the Department of Health said Monday.
During the House committee on health’s hearing on the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said doing house-to-house inoculation is “possible.”
Related Stories
“This is part of the planning, especially for those who are very, very vulnerable and high-risk senior citizens,” Duque said in Filipino.
“If they will have difficulty going to vaccine sites, we will bring the vaccines to them,” he said.
But the health chief stressed that this is “more of an exception rather than the rule” because protocols on post immunization surveillance, monitoring and reporting of adverse events following vaccination must be followed.
In a Senate hearing last week, Duque said that 4,512 vaccination sites will be set up across the country. Each site aims to inoculate 300 people a day.
The Philippines is targeting to vaccinate 50 to 70 million Filipinos against COVID-19 this year alone, with the first shots expected to arrive as early as February. This target, however, depends on the availability of vaccine supplies, which had been mostly procured by wealthy nations.
The government also faces the critical task of storing shots and distributing them across the archipelago, as well as reestablishing public trust on vaccine after the highly politicized Dengvaxia controversy.
The country signed term sheets with Novavax for 30 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca for 17 million doses and Sinovac for 25 million doses.
Only Pfizer has so far obtained emergency use authorization from the country’s Food and Drug Administration for its jab. Such approval is needed for any COVID-19 vaccine before it can be rolled out.
With over half a million COVID-19 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths, the Philippines has the second worst coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia.