(Eagle News) — The Department of Health said that it has created “vaccine operation centers” nationwide in preparation for the arrival of vaccines against COVID-19.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that the DOH has also set up the vaccine operation centers in all of the DOH’s regional offices, and have also downloaded the needed readiness assessment tools for all local government units.
With these tools, Vergeire said that they can assess gaps in the vaccine efforts.
“Dahil alam po natin na nalalapit na po ang pagdating ng mga deliveries ng mga bakuna, we already have created vaccine operation centers in all of our regional offices. We also have downloaded readiness assessment tools para po sa ating mga local government units, so that we can be able to assess the gaps as early as this point” she explained in a Laging Handa press briefing on Wednesday, Jan. 27.
Vergeire said that they will have capacity building for the implementing units in the government’s vaccine program nationwide.
They are also preparing master listing for the those identified to be given the vaccines, with the minimum demographic fields indicated. These details will have to be sent to the DOH by the implementing units.
-Trainings in identifying adverse effects-
Aside from this, the DOH said that they have conducted trainings in the identification of adverse effects following the immunization.
“And we have adopted ito pong organized way of reporting adverse reactions through the system of Digi-Flow which is an international reporting system for adverse events,” Vergeire said.
In preparation for this, Vergeire said that Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and national vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., have been doing the rounds of local government units to check the areas where the vaccinations would be done.
“We were able to do this town hall meetings and also nakapag-ikot na rin po ang ating mga CODE teams kasama ni Secretary Galvez, ni Secretary Duque at ng iba pa ho nating ahensiya para ma-check po ang mga lugar kung tayo po ay handa na talaga sa pagdating nitong mga bakunang ito,” she said.
Galvez earlier said that they are expecting the initial batch of COVID-19 vaccines to arrive by February 20 at the earliest.
(Eagle News Service)
