No politics in plea for VP Leni to expand vaccine project to Visayas, Mindanao —solon

Cagayan de Oro City Representative Rufus Rodriguez on Saturday said there was nothing wrong in local government units in Visayas and Mindanao seeking assistance from Vice President Leni Robredo to expand her drive-through vaccination project beyond Luzon.

Rodriguez made the remark days after he issued a public appeal to Robredo to include areas outside Luzon in her #VaccineExpress project, which - together with Manila City government - was launched earlier this week and vaccinated around 1,500 vehicle drivers and delivery riders.

"Walang pulitika dito (There's no politics here) because cases in Cagayan de Oro is still very high, Davao City is still very high, same with Zamboaga, Butuan City in Mindanao, Iloilo and Bacolod City in Visayas and Albay in Bicol," Rodriguez said in a radio interview.

Rodriguez belongs to the Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino and Robredo is with the Liberal Party.

“I asked Vice President Leni Robredo to also consider ‘wag na dito sa Maynila... Ang daming nagbibigay [sa Manila] at tsaka bumababa na [ang kaso]... dito sa [National Capital Region]. It’s really my concern for our city. Kung maibigay lang naman siya. [Ang] city namin hindi pa nakapag bigay sa mga drivers, workers, A2, A3 kami,” he added.

(Manila has been getting a lot of vaccines already and cases in Metro Manila has been going down. So I asked VP Robredo if she could give assistance since drivers, workers, those under the A2 [senior citizens] and A3 [with comorbidities] categories in Cagayan de Oro haven't been vaccinated yet.)

According to the lawmaker, Cagayan de Oro has so far only vaccinated 70,000 residents, compared to Manila City's 600,000 vaccinated individuals.

As of June 22, Cagayan de Oro has reported a total of 9,503 confirmed cases. Of this number, 1,347 are still active while 7,733 have recovered and 423 have died.

Cagayan de Oro belonged to the areas recently declared by the OCTA Research Group as "areas of concern." The other areas areas are the cities of Davao, Bacolod, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, and Tacloban.

Earlier, Robredo suggested that Davao City should learn from the experience of Cebu City to address the steady rise of COVID-19 cases in the capital of Mindanao.

But presidential daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte criticized Robredo’s statement, citing the latter doesn’t know anything about the situation in Mindanao.

“The Vice President should refrain from giving advise if she knows nothing about what is happening on the ground,” Duterte earlier said.

Aside from being tagged as an area of concern, Davao City has led the list of local government units outside Metro Manila with the most number of new COVID-19 cases from June 13 to 19, according to the OCTA Research team.

The Philippines has reported 1,391,911 confirmed cases, of which 1,314,220 have recovered and 53,447 have died. -MDM, GMA News