The Department of Health (DOH) revised its targets for COVID-19 booster shots after it failed to reach its initial daily goal.
DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said government now needs to administer 443,892 additional doses daily and inoculate 20,774 senior citizens per day so the country can reach 23 million shots by Oct. 8, ABS-CBN News reported.
The DOH earlier said it did not reach the target number of 397,000 individuals to be vaccinated per day in the first week of the new administration. The Marcos administration earlier initiated its “PinasLakas” COVID-19 booster campaign.
Currently, DOH has administered 384,000 booster shots and inoculated 17,000 more elderly since the launch of the campaign on July 26. The DOH meanwhile said it has detected 104 more cases of highly transmissible omicron subvariants BA.5, BA.4, and BA.2.12.1.
The government meanwhile found 95 additional cases of the omicron BA.5, 7 more cases of the BA.4, and 2 new cases of the BA2.12.1. The latest figures raise the country’s total to 3,107 BA.5 cases, 174 BA.2.12.1 cases, and 104 BA.4 cases, Vergeire said.
Of the 95 new BA.5 cases, a total of 83 have recovered, while 5 were undergoing isolation, and the status of the remaining 7 patients was being verified, Vergeire said.
The Makabayan Bloc in the House of Representatives meanwhile has sought a congressional investigation on the reported expiration of million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
The group filed on Friday House Resolution 179 urging the House Committee on Health to look into the matter.
The resolution noted that on. June 28, 2022, former Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that the country’s vaccine wastage is at 4.7 percent, “which he claimed to be within the acceptable rate of 10 percent or lower.
As of July 19, 2022, the DOH said that 71.4 million individuals in the country are fully vaccinated and about 15.7 million have received their first booster shots and only 1.1 million have received their second booster shots.
Further, the number of COVID-19 and non-COVID inquiries to the National Patient Navigation and Referral Center is now equal, an official of the referral said. According to Dr. Bernadett Velasco, operations manager of NPNRC, said majority of the calls come from Metro Manila and Calabarzon.