Seven towns in Antique have applied for the Department of Information and Communications Technology Vaccine Administration System (D-VAS) following the successful pilot in Libertad.

In an interview Wednesday, DICT Antique provincial officer Jimuel Española said Libertad is the first in the province and the second LGU in Western Visayas to have the D-VAS, which is a software developed by their department to support the national immunization program of the government against Covid-19.

The D-VAS is part of the Vaccine Information Management System (VIMS).

VIMS is composed of the VIMS-Immunization Registry for master listing and pre-registration for vaccination and the D-VAS for the directory of vaccine recipients.

“The D-VAS in the Municipality of Libertad was implemented on August 18 after a dry run,” Española said.

Mayor Mary Jean Te submitted a letter of intent to DICT Secretary Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan II after their virtual roadshow on June 9, he added.

Pandan,Tibiao, Laua-an, Anini-y, Bugasong, Belison, and Patnongon towns have made their requests for the D-VAS.

“DICT has already conducted training on the personnel of Pandan and Tibiao to be assigned with the D-VAS while the other towns Laua-an, Anini-y, Bugasong, Belison, and Patnongon are still on the process of preparing their needed computer units and personnel,” Española said.

He said the system was adopted by the Inter-Agency Task Force For the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) under Resolution No. 117 to build capacity, deploy and monitor the use of Information Communications Technology (ICT) solutions related to Covid-19.

“We are actually campaigning in all the 18 towns in the province to use the D-VAS for this will eventually become a national registry for the issuance of the vaccination card,” Española said.

Libertad Information Officer II Jay Tumbokon said they had a smooth and paperless Covid-19 vaccination process since they started using the D-VAS.

“We had five personnel from our Management Information System (MIS) office assigned to handle the five step of the D- VAS,” he said.

The five steps start from registration, vital signs entry, health screening, inoculation recording, and post-vaccination monitoring.

“We made a floor plan of the Municipal Covered Court so that it would be easy also for the people to know where they will go for their next step,” Tumbokon said.

He added that it is easy to use and they are now training the health workers in their town. (PNA)