Northern Samar gets 50,000 doses

CATARMAN, Northern Samar — Northern Samar will get an additional 50,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine following a commitment made by Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go on Saturday.

Northern Samar Governor Edwin Ongchuan said he received a call from Go, who is the chair of Senate committee on health, and Secretary Carlito Galvez committing the additional doses of vaccines shortly after he made an appeal through PTV4’s Public Briefing #LagingHandaPh on Saturday.

Ongchuan made the appeal for help from the national government due to the sudden surge of Covid-19 cases in the province that saw 123 new cases on 10 June, the highest ever since the start of the pandemic.

“We need additional allocation of vaccines to stem the active cases here in our province and reach 70 percent herd immunity. This is the only chance we see for the province to recover,” Ongchuan said.

The province has so far received a total of 28,127 vials of Sinovac and Astra Zenica vaccines. Ongchuan said the vaccination schedule is still for the A3 class and even then, the allocation was not enough to cover all the A1 to A3 category of the province population.

The governor pointed out that several mass gatherings in the different parts of the province where minimum health protocols were not observed in the entire length caused the surge of infections in Northern Samar.

Among the new sources of infection were a church concert as well as the queue for training applications for the Philippine National Police and the Bureau of Fire Protection. He said people only practice health protocols in the beginning but tend to forget social distancing and wearing of masks .

Other than the mass gathering, Ongchuan also directed the re-imposition of Oplan Disiplina against violators of the local ordinances on curfew and the wearing of masks and face shield.