BY OLIVER T. BACCAY
TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan (April 20)—The Local Government Unit of Alcala has allotted P6 million to procure vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
Alcala Mayor Cristina Antonio said the aforementioned amount was determined to purchase doses of vaccines that can benefit at least 5,000 individuals.
“We are requesting the national government to help us purchase our vaccines at the best price. This is also our contribution to the thrust of the government to protect the people versus Covid-19,” Antonio said.
She also stated that the healthcare frontliners on the municipal level were already inoculated while the vaccination on the members of the Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams (BHERTs) is still ongoing.
“There are minimal refusals to the vaccination because of fear of side effects, but with constant explanation and encouragement, they eventually agree to be vaccinated to have protection against the deadly virus,” she said.
Antonio also stated that they continue to record confirmed cases, including health frontliners who are very vulnerable to the virus.
She said they are conducting aggressive contact tracing for each positive case to immediately track down the virus to eliminate the contagion in a large populace.
“We do mass testing every two weeks with our frontliners. We also offer antigen tests to those who have close contacts to positive patients and those who have symptoms,” Antonio said.
She said testing is one of the key strategies they implement to avoid the further spread of the virus as majority of the cases are already within people’s homes.