BONTOC, Mountain Province – The provincial government will be implementing the mobile vaccination strategy to inoculate senior citizens who continue to refuse to be vaccinated in the ongoing rollout of the government’s mass vaccination program to help in achieving population protection and eventual herd immunity.
Gov. Bonifacio C. Lacwasan, Jr. stated that aside from deploying health workers to conduct the house-to-house vaccination of the senior citizens, pep talks will also be done by the assigned health workers to convince the elderly to be vaccinated to further increase the province’s vaccination rate among seniors.
He added that the initial conduct of the pep talks with senior citizens in some barangays, was successful with some elderly being inoculated over the past several weeks.
The governor pointed out that health workers will have to patiently implement the strategies to convince the elderly to be vaccinated to improve the province’s vaccination rate for the said priority sector because they are vulnerable and need to be spared from contracting severe infection that may result in death.
Earlier, Lacwasan claimed that health workers are having a difficulty in convincing senior citizens to be vaccinated thus the vaccination rate of this priority sector remains around 41 percent, way below the more than 71 percent vaccination rate among frontliners, persons with co-morbidities and workers in the essential sectors.
According to him, the common reason for the refusal of the senior citizens to be vaccinated is because they are already old and that the vaccines should be given to those who urgently need this.
However, the local chief executive wants health workers to still convince these senior citizens to explain to them the importance of being inoculated.
He said what is important is that there are many people from the different parts of the province who want to be vaccinated. That is why no vaccines are being wasted and that all vaccines being given to the province are all vaccinated to the members of the priority sectors.
Lacwasan urged residents to continue to adhere to the implementation of the health and safety protocols even if they are vaccinated to prevent them from contracting the deadly virus and as part of their obligation in helping contain the rapid spread of the virus in the different parts of the province.
Mountain Province has the least Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the Cordillera with a few hundred active cases, unlike in other provinces that have surges in overwhelming their respective local health care system and stressing the frontliners.
Lacwasan called on the residents to always ensure their compliance to the prescribed mandatory wearing of face masks and shields, the practice of physical distancing, the observance of personal hygiene and the conduct of regular disinfection in their homes and offices as part of the precautionary measures to prevent them from being infected with the virus. By Dexter A. See