MANKAYAN, Benguet – Residents in the town’s twelve barangays are eagerly awaiting the arrival of more vaccines for them to have added protection from the severe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Mayor Frenzel A. Ayong stated that the latest 600 vaccines delivered to the municipality were immediately administered and consumed in a matter of 2 days.
Earlier, the local government designated the Carlos Palanca, Jr. Community Center in the mining camp of the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company (LCMC) as the centralized vaccination center of the municipality.
He disclosed there are now more people in the locality who are interested to be vaccinated more than the number of allocated vaccines thus the inter-agency task force for the management of emerging infectious diseases must increase the vaccine allocation for low-income local governments.
Mayor Ayong witnessed the long lines of people from the different barangays wanting to be inoculated recently and some of them were sent home because the available vaccines were not enough for the residents who rushed to the centralized vaccination center to be vaccinated against the deadly virus.
He urged residents to continue submitting themselves for registration in their respective barangays so that it will be collated by the municipal health office and submitted to the health department for the possibility of increasing the vaccine allocation for the municipality once the vaccine supply will be available in the coming weeks.
Under the guidelines of the inter-agency task force for the management of emerging infectious diseases, local governments are mandated to undertake the registration of their constituents that are interested to be vaccinated that will serve as the basis for the allocation of the vaccines that will be delivered by the different pharmaceutical companies.
The local chief executive claimed that most of those who have signified their interest to be vaccinated and those who had been lining up to avail of the available vaccines are farmers and the members of their families that is why it is enlightening that agriculture industry stakeholders are well informed of the importance of being vaccinated for them to be able to continue their daily productive activities.
At the start of the roll out of the government’s mass vaccination program, Ayong had been advocating that agriculture industry stakeholders, like farmers and other farm workers, should be one of the priority sectors in this quarantine time as they are always at the forefront in ensuring the production of agricultural crops for the country’s population.
Currently, Benguet is the producer of more than 80 percent of the supply of highland vegetables that is being sold in the different markets nationwide. By HENT
