Private sector wants flexibility in vaccinating workers included in A4 category

The private sector will appeal to the government to give them more flexibility in vaccinating their employees who are included in the A4 priority group against COVID-19.

In a joint hearing of the House Committees on Health and Trade and of Industry, presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion said they will present a list of positions in the A4 group before the Department of Health and the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) on Thursday.

“That is going to be critical because what we want to appeal to DOH and NITAG is to give the private sector the flexibility, because if you look at the industries that I’ve presented who purchased vaccines, there are so many industries who have different positions [on the list]… We will list them all but [we need] flexibility in who comes first,” Concepcion said.

He explained that there are employees in some companies who may not be present on their scheduled inoculation date based on the A4 prioritization list.

“We should be allowed to just inoculate all those in that list of A4. So that’s what we are going to request the NITAG. I think that is important,” Concepcion said.

Last week, the  Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases approved the list of sectors included in the Priority Group A4 of the government’s COVID-19 vaccination plan.

The complete list of Priority Group A4 is as follows:

• commuter transport (land, air, and sea), including logistics
• public and private wet and dry market vendors
• frontline workers in groceries, supermarkets, delivery services
• workers in manufacturing for food, beverage, medical and pharmaceutical products
• frontline workers in food retail, including food service delivery
• frontline workers in private and government financial services
• frontline workers in hotels and accommodation establishments
• priests, rabbis, imams, and other religious leaders
• security guards/ personnel assigned in offices, agencies, and organizations identified in the list of priority industries/sectors
• frontline workers in private and government news media
• customer-facing personnel of telecoms, cable and internet service providers, electricity distribution and water distribution utilities
• frontline personnel in basic education and higher education institutions and agencies
• overseas Filipino workers, including those scheduled for deployment within two months
• frontline workers in law/justice, security, and social protection sectors
• frontline government workers engaged in the operations of government transport system, quarantine inspection; worker safety inspection and other COVID-19 response activities
• frontline government workers in charge of tax collection, assessment of businesses for incentives, election, national ID, data collection personnel
• diplomatic community and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) personnel in consular operations
• Department of Public Works and Highways personnel in charge of monitoring government infrastructure projects

Before the A4 group, the government has already started inoculating the medical frontliners, senior citizens, and the persons with comorbidities. —KBK, GMA News