By Rey Anthony Chiu | 11:01 AM March 27, 2022
The dream for Bohol to step into the new normal still hinges on its vaccine accomplishment, most especially in reaching out to its senior citizens.
National Task Force vice chief implementer Secretary Vivencio Dizon and the Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque emphasized this during the recent BIDA Tungo sa New Normal Roadshow March 18 at the Pavilion of the Bellevue, here.
Set as an official visit of the Coordinate Operations to Defeat the Epidemic (CODE) Team, the Roadshow also affords local officials, municipal leaders as well as industry representatives the chance to meet the National Task Force and be briefed on the steps needed for Bohol to transition into Alert Level 1 and ultimately to Alert Level Zero.
Bohol is still under COVID Alert level 2 and may linger there until the vaccination accomplishment improves and the active cases continue to plummet to very manageable levels.
According to Governor Arthur Yap, in his report to the NTF and the local industry stakeholders including business, tourism and the academe, Bohol has reached 60.75 % vaccination accomplishment as of March 15, 2022.
By this, some 871,970 Boholanos have received the full doses of the vaccines against Covid-19, while some 670,680 Boholanos received the first dose and could be getting their second doses anytime.
However, the Bohol Inter-Agency Task Force on the management of Emerging Infectious Diseases said that some 1,106,082 of the 1,394,329 Boholanos have to get their full vaccination for Bohol to attain the target vaccinating at least 70% of the total population.
Still short of 102,278 Boholanos who must have been fully protected against the fatal coronavirus disease with the vaccines by now, the national Inter-Agency Task Force impressed upon local officials and health authorities to strive to ramp up on the vaccination.
The NIATF particularly asked local leaders and municipal stakeholders to get to the A2 priority group.
A2, of the senior citizens have been the most vulnerable to death once they get Covid-19, according to data gathered by the DOH from hospitals all over the country.
If we fail to get to them, they will fill our emergency rooms and bring our hospitals to critical capacity again and believe me, many will die, Sec Dizon elaborated.
Boholanos who have been hit not just by the pandemic, but also with the super-typhoon that wrought Bohol’s dream of stepping into anew normal faster.
With the numbers of active new cases already down to manageable levels, tourism and business industry leaders want the government to already lower the local Alert Level, so they can already operate on full steam.
But the DOH and the NIATF said the decision to deescalate Bohol’s alert level would come from many recommendations, and not just from the DOH and the NIATF. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)
