TUBLAY, Benguet – Benguet Caretaker Congressman and Anti-Crime and Terrorism through Community Involvement and Support (ACT-CIS) Party-list Rep. Eric Yap announced that members of the vulnerable sectors in the province will be provided with the appropriate does of vaccines to help in preventing the spread of the dreaded Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the province and to allow the gradual and safe recovery of the local economy that was heavily impacted by the ongoing pandemic.
Yap, who served as the guest of honor during the opening of the 20-bed capacity isolation unit in Barangay Ambongdolan, stated that it will be the frontliners, particularly the health workers and uniformed personnel, who will be the first recipients of the vaccines that will be allocated for the province to jumpstart the roll out of the government’s mass vaccination program in the locality.
However, he was not able to divulge the exact number of dose of the vaccines that will be given to the province by the National Vaccine Committee although Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. assured him that the province will be getting its equitable share from the vaccines that have already arrived in the country for the implementation of the vaccination program.
Congressman Yap pointed out that the people should understand there is a limited supply of vaccines that arrived in the country that is why there are members of the vulnerable sectors that will be prioritized to be vaccinated.
According to him, once the country will be getting its allocation from the vaccines it was able to purchase and the supply coming from the COVACs facility of the World Health Organization, a certain portion of the province’s population will be vaccinated aside from the vaccines that will be purchased by the local governments for their respective constituents.
While it is true that local governments in the province did not allocate funds for the purchase of vaccines to attain herd immunity among the populace, he claimed that his office will closely work with the National Vaccine Committee to ensure that there will be more than enough vaccines that will be made available for the people in Benguet because vaccination is part of the holistic approach that should be embraced by the government to be able to start the revival of the local economy.
Aside from working with concerned government agencies, the lawmaker will also use some of his personal resources to be able to purchase the required volume of vaccines that will be used to vaccinate frontliners such as health workers dealing with COVID-19 patients, uniformed personnel of the police and the armed forces and even members of the media who had been definitely exposed to the elements for nearly a year of being under various levels of community quarantine.
What is important, according to Congressman Yap, is for everyone to be able to protect themselves by ensuring their adherence to the prevailing health and safety protocols to ensure that they will not contract the virus and spread the same in their families and communities. By HENT