Marcos admin aims to give 23M booster shots in the first 100 days

Within the first hundred days of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s administration, or by the beginning of October, the government plans to give booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine to nearly 23 million individuals.

In a message that she sent to CNN Philippines on Tuesday, the officer-in-charge Undersecretary of the Department of Health (DOH), Maria Rosario Vergeire, verified this aim.

In a statement that was subsequently distributed to the media, the Department of Health (DOH) stated that the federal government’s goal is to have at least half of the target population vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to improve immunity and prevent severe and critical illness.

The Department of Health said that “In order to achieve 50% booster coverage as part of the First 100 Days, we need to vaccinate 23,840,032 individuals.”

“This number is half of the 78,100,578 target population, less 15,210,257 who have already been given their first booster/third dose,” they added.

According to the Department of Health, in order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to provide about 397,000 booster shots every day for a period of sixty days.

Prior to this, Marcos made the announcement that his administration will undertake a large-scale booster effort to assist in making it possible for limits to be loosened in the future and to get ready for the complete resumption of face-to-face classrooms.

Joey Concepcion, founder of Go Negosyo and a former presidential adviser for entrepreneurship, reiterated his call on Tuesday for the government to authorize the administration of second boosters to employees, stating that 1.5 million vaccine doses that were acquired by the private sector are set to expire by the end of the month. Concepcion said this because the vaccine doses were purchased by the private sector.

At this time, persons who are qualified to receive their second booster are limited to senior citizens, health care professionals, and select immunocompromised patients.

As of the 18th of July, official data showed that 71.3 million Filipinos had received their final dosage of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 4.6 million individuals had received their initial vaccination.