MANILA, Philippines — The government’s task force on pandemic response has included more people in the top priority group for the country’s COVID-19 vaccination program, Malacañang said Friday.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said outbound overseas Filipino workers who will be deployed in the next four months are now part of the A1 group.
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The immediate family members of health workers will be included in A1 "once vaccine supply becomes available,” he said.
Previously, the top priority group included only the country’s healthcare workers who are at higher risk of contracting the virus.
The Department of Health said on Wednesday that 85% of the medical frontliners nationwide have been vaccinated against COVID-19 nearly three months since the program began. Broken down, 581,797 health workers have received full protection against the virus, while 1.34 million have received one of the two doses.
Overall, only 1.02 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against the virus. The figure represents only 0.94% of the nation’s roughly 110 million population.