Naga to vax czar Galvez: Give us more vaccines

By Jason B. Neola

The Naga City government has requested the country’s vaccine czar, Sec. Carlito Galvez, Jr., for bigger quantity of vaccine for its residents as well as those living in neighboring towns in Camarines Sur.

In a letter dated June 17 to Galvez, the chief implementer of the National Task Force Against Covid-19, Mayor Nelson Legacion said that the 6,670 doses of vaccines that the city had received from DOH were good only for 3,335 residents or 1.4 percent of the city’s 231,000 population.

Legacion informed Galvez that the implementation of the new quarantine classification in Naga is a welcome development, saying that the city’s modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) status will facilitate control and containment measures to cut the community transmission of the virus.

He added that the city government, in partnership with the Camarines Sur Medical Society, is capable of inoculating 1,000 individuals per day at its mega vaccination facility, given the sufficient supply of vaccines.

“The city government is now trying to identify savings out of its annual budget to fund vaccine procurement but with the recent declaration of MECQ with its attendant need to mobilize barangays and volunteers for enforcement duties, we may not be able to raise much,” Legacion said in his letter to the vaccine czar.

In requesting more vaccines also for Naga’s nearby towns, he explained that Naga being a city “ is a natural convergence point for adjacent towns and provinces. Add to the presence of the Bicol Medical Center in the city as well as of four private hospitals handling Covid and suspect cases and the risk of transmission among our residents, visitors, and transients availing of urban services is quite high. As it is important to Naga residents to get inoculated, so do those in our neighboring LGUs.”

He assured Galvez and the Department of Health (DOH) that LGU Naga is seriously implementing the Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Treat-Reintegrate protocol in the fight against Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).