LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The municipal government admitted it is having a difficulty in complying with the increased vaccination rate, equivalent to seventy five percent of the town’s population, because of the alleged refusal of the residents to avail of the vaccines to achieve herd immunity.
Mayor Romeo K. Salda claimed that the town’s vaccination rate at present is slightly over 71 percent still below the prescribed 75 percent of the population for the realization of the desired herd immunity to pave the lowering of the prevailing alert level not only in the municipality but also in the whole province.
At present, Benguet remains under Alert Level 2 as per the guidelines of the inter-agency task force for the management of emerging infectious diseases because of its failure to hurdle the prescribed 75 percent herd immunity.
On the other hand, Mayor Salda claimed that contributory to the town’s inability to achieve the desired herd immunity is its over 57 percent vaccination rate of senior citizens to date.
According to him, of the 10,082 senior citizens, some 5,782 have already been vaccinated with the ongoing aggressive roll out of the government’s vaccination program.
The mayor explained that the municipal government is having a difficult time vaccinating the remaining number of the elderly despite the house-to-house inventory of unvaccinated individuals in the barangays.
He urged all those who have not been vaccinated or those who are allowed to take their booster doses to avail of the vaccines provided by the government for them to have added protection to prevent them from contracting the virus that might compromise their health.
The mayor underscored that the pandemic is not yet over because of the emergence of the various variants of the virus that may trigger future surges in cases as evidenced by the slight increase in reported COVID-19 cases in some parts of the country, thus, the need for people to still be vaccinated to allow the realization of the prescribed herd immunity.
Salda asserted it is important for the residents to cooperate with the ongoing vaccination program to help in lowering the alert level status of the municipality and the province so that the restrictive community quarantine restrictions can be eased to allow the residents and visitors alike to move around which can help in the revival of the local economy.
While people are still allowed to move around even under Alert Level 2, Salda explained that all the concerned sectors already need to start somewhere to allow displaced workers to get back to work and re-establish their economic activities to sustain their needs.
