Gov't target of 54M fully vaxxed Pinoys by yearend remains despite typhoon Odette disruptions —DOH exec

The Duterte administration has maintained the target of fully vaccinating 54 million Filipinos against COVID-19 by yearend despite postponement of inoculation activities in some parts of the country due to devastation brought by Typhoon Odette.

Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje made the announcement on Monday even if 639 local government units postponed COVID-19 vaccination due to Typhoon Odette.

"What we have agreed upon is that the COVID-19 vaccination will continue until December 23, then it will resume December 27 to 30 so we can reach the target of 54 million Filipinos fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by yearend," Cabotaje said during the Laging Handa briefing.

"There are around 21  million who are due to receive second, so they should be able to get it, and we will ramp it (COVID-19 vaccination) up with the Janssen vaccine which is administered on one dose, so this will really help in our vaccination," she added.

The government conducted a second round of national vaccination from December 15 to 17 in areas not affected by the typhoon, but only 2,482,044 million COVID-19 doses were administered.

The second round of the national vaccination for Odette-affected areas is set on December 20 to 22.

The government target for the second round of national vaccination is to administer seven million doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

"In areas where there have been postponement of vaccination activities such as Region 5, Region 4B, Regions 6, 7, 8, and Caraga, they are expected to resume [vaccination] today," Cabotaje said.

"There are others which will resume on December 20 to 28 because their priority right now is relief and rehabilitation due to typhoon Odette. In any case, we leave it to the LGUs to figure out other ways to step up the pace of the vaccination," she added.

As this developed, Cabotaje also said that 100 vials of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine expired in Region 6 partly due to Typhoon Odette.

"On wastage, there were 100 vials of Pfizer which expired because it only lasts for 30 days under a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees celsius. These were not administered immediately because there were not enough vaccinators and then typhoon Odette came which postponed vaccinations," she said.

"This is only what we have on wastage so far pending assessment of damages in other areas where there are power outages," she added.

There are around 43 million fully vaccinated Filipinos so far.

The Duterte administration is eyeing to have 77 million fully vaccinated Filipinos by March 2002 and 90 million by the time President Rodrigo Duterte's term ends on June 30, 2022.

The government's COVID-19 vaccination program started last March 1 while vaccination for those aged 12 to 17 years old only started last November.—AOL, GMA News