The Davao City government is open to giving anti-Covid booster shots to Dabawenyos but only after Davao City achieved its target of population protection or herd immunity.
Davao City Covid-19 Task Force Spokesperson Dr. Michelle Schlosser in Wednesday’s edition of the Covid-19 Alert over the Davao City Disaster Radio said that herd immunity should be prioritized first to be eligible for the booster shot allocation. She added that the city is yet to receive guidelines from the Department of Health (DoH) about administering booster shots.
“Ang DOH wala pay gihatag na guidelines for a booster shot and we are assuming kay wala paman nato na achieve ang herd immunity (DOH has yet to give guidelines and we are assuming that it is because we have not achieved herd immunity)” Schlosser said.
She said, “booster shots will be rendered futile or useless if the city has not reached herd immunity yet.”
Schlosser urged Dabawenyos to get vaccinated and help the city achieve population protection and establish eligibility for booster shots. Unvaccinated people, who are still hesitant to be immunized must get the right information about the anti-Covid vaccines.
Recall that in previous interviews, Schlosser said the DOH-XI and the city are discussing booster shots for medical health frontliners who were first vaccinated.
Even before these talks with DoH-XI, Davao City Mayor Inday Sara Duterte said that the Davao City Covid-19 Task Force has passed a resolution requesting DoH-XI to roll out booster shots for medical health care workers in all hospitals in the city. This is out of concern for manpower challenges in the hospitals brought about by the pandemic.
As of November 10, the city already vaccinated a total of 909, 149 for the first dose and 836,122 for the second dose.
The city aims to reach the over 1.2 Million target for herd immunity. CIO