The Department of Health (DOH) said house-to-house coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination is a “good strategy” to inoculate more people and to lessen the crowd in vaccination centers.

In a Laging Handa briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said local government units (LGUs) may proceed on these house-to-house visits if they have the resources.

“Unang-una, masisiguro natin na hindi magkukumpul-kumpol ang mga tao. Kung mayroon mang iikot hindi na kailangang pumunta pa ang mga kababayan natin sa isang lugar para doon mag-antay mabakunahan. Pangalawa, mas maganda kasi masusuyod natin ang bahay-bahay (Firstly, we can ensure that there won’t be crowding, the public could just wait from their homes to get vaccinated. Secondly, they can identify those who were not yet able to get their shots,” she said.

“Maganda po iyang strategy na iyan if LGUs have the resources, maari po nating gawin iyan (That’s a good strategy, if LGUs have the resources, they can do that),” she added.

In Metro Manila, LGUs are targeting to inoculate between 180,000 to 200,000 individuals among all of the cities and the lone municipality in the region.

By doing this, Vergeire said the National Capital Region might be able to vaccinate 70 percent of its population by September.

“So ito po ay susuportahan naman ng ating national government at titingnan ho natin kung paano rin natin sila siyempre maga-guide (We support this and we are looking at how we can guide them) on how we can better do this so that it can be something that can be used for us to protect our citizens from this Delta variant,” she said.

While the region will be placed under enhanced community quarantine from August 6 to 20, Vergeire assured that vaccination efforts will continue.

“So, we will have safe vaccination sites. Itutuloy pa rin natin at actually itataas po natin ang bilang ng dapat mabakunahan para po agad-agad tayo magkaroon ng protection laban sa mga variant (We will continue this and actually increase the number of vaccinees so that we can get the protection against the variant as soon as possible),” she added.

Stricter community quarantine measures were put in place following the threat of the more infectious Delta variant, which has infected over 200 people in the Philippines.

Vergeire noted that the DOH cannot conclude yet that there is now a community transmission of the Delta variant pending enough evidence.

“Sa ngayon po, we have the local transmission kung saan nakikita pa po natin ang pagkaka-link ng bawat isang kaso na mayroon tayong genome sequence na positive sa isa’t isa (At present, what we have is the local transmission where we can still see the link in every case that has undergone genome sequencing),” she said.

“Darating po tayo diyan sa pagdideklara ng community transmission if we are able to provide evidence already that we cannot link these individuals to each other anymore at saka nakikita na natin na talagang kalat na iyong extent nitong variant na ito (We will declare community transmission if we can provide evidence already that we cannot link these individuals to each other anymore),” she added.PNA