QC vaccination at 40.4% of target but 'confident' of population protection
MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City local government's vaccination program has hit the one million mark for coronavirus jabs administered to constituents, it said Wednesday.
In a statement sent to reporters, the city government said that exactly 1,013,988 jabs have been rolled out as of July 13. This is, however, only an aggregate figure of total vaccines administered.
Out of this number, only 686,311 or 40.37% of the 1.7 million target population have received their first doses, while 327,677 or 19.28% of the same target are fully protected after receiving their second doses.
"We are confident we will reach our goal of population protection in the coming months for as long as soon as vaccine supply stabilizes,” Belmonte said.
The Quezon City mayor added that last June 23, the city government posted a new record by administering more than 45,000 vaccines in one day.
LGUs urge steady supply from national gov't
For the past weeks, Quezon City said that its vaccination program has "consistently reached record-high numbers."
The local government added in its statement that provided there is a sufficient supply of vaccines on hand, the city government can operate around 50 vaccination sites simultaneously.
“We can no longer feel the vaccine hesitancy, instead what we have now is vaccine envy where people demand they get vaccinated,” Joseph Juico, co-chair of the QC Task Force Vax to Normal, said.
READ: Metro Manila cities limit vaccination amid insufficient supply
"However, our problem continues to be the irregular supply of vaccines which we hope will be addressed as the procured and donated supplies arrive regularly into the country," he also said.
To recall, a number of cities in the capital region were forced to restrict their vaccination of first doses after supplies from the national government began to run dry.
To date, 1.48 million coronavirus infections have been recorded in the Philippines, 44,408 of whom are still classified as active cases.
Per Our World in Data, the Philippines remains among the worst countries in the world when it comes to vaccines per population. Latest figures from the National Task Force Against COVID-19 show that only 3.2% of the Philippines' total 109 million population as of 2020 has received at least a first dose.
The government now favors "population protection" as a target since herd immunity, which would require vaccinating at least 70% of an area's population, "has a lot of attached criteria," the health department said in May.
READ: Herd immunity in 2021 a 'big challenge' with just 3.2% fully vaccinated so far
Disclosure: Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte is a shareholder of Philstar Global Corp., which operates digital news outlet Philstar.com. This article was produced following editorial guidelines.
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