Duterte tells LGUs to find safer place for people waiting to be vaccinated
President Rodrigo Duterte said local government units should be more proactive in setting up venues for COVID-19 vaccination amid reports about people exposed to rain and floods while waiting in line to get their jabs.
"The problem is for the local governments to come up with a more sane process of vaccination than allowing people to queue as early as four o'clock in the morning and getting their shots at about nine o'clock in... It seems to me is not the way to vaccine --- to vaccinate people," Duterte said during a meeting with medical experts on Saturday night.
"Can I request the Secretary of Local Government to just enjoin them - maybe a directive to enjoin them to be more circumspect and not to - especially now that the southwest monsoon is passing the country. It should be not like this. It's not the way - how to do it," he said.
"They have to be more proactive than just maybe setting a venue then without the mechanism of how to transfer it by - and, at the same time, informing the people of the new site," he added.
Duterte said the local government units should consider the weather when choosing a vaccination site to protect people from the elements that may also cause other illnesses.
"Leptospirosis, then you have influenza, then you have the respiratory (ailment). When hit by a simple cold, it can deteriorate into a respiratory problem and when exposed to COVID... i so I'd like to have a rule, sir, that to encourage them not to use that kind of setup even if it is numbered in the inoculation or it is just given to anybody who’s there who wants it? It has to take into account the weather now and the place that where they should be waiting," he said.
"It's a question of common sense ... They should have divide it into half and telling the others to report for another, for their vaccines at another hour and look for a place, I said, where people are protected from the elements of the climates. I would say that I would question the mayor and the barangay captain, the barangay captain because it is the barangay captain who would act as the marshal. Marshal to monitor the people. It's the barangay captain there," the president noted.
" They say it's open to everybody and anybody. The problem is crowding. People who would respond to the announcement that inoculation shall be given to those who are there on the site but not taking into account, I said, the amount of time and the motion to do it and making them go back. You come back at some other hour. And on top of that really, the most important thing, is to look for a dry place," he added. Robina Asido/DMS
