The government will hold targeted national vaccination days in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) and Cebu province next week to ramp up the country’s inoculation coverage, a health official said Friday.

In a Palace briefing, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the vaccination drive in Cebu will run from March 29 to 31 and in BARMM from March 30 to April 1.

“Abangan po ng ating mga kababayan sa lugar na iyan, pupunta po ang ating deployed teams para matulungan ang regions na ito upang tumaas ang pagbabakuna (Our fellowmen in those places, expect that our deployed teams will be there to help these regions improve their vaccination coverage),” she added.

Apart from being vaccinated, Vergeire noted that receiving booster shots would protect individuals from having severe Covid-19 or death from the disease as more transmissible variants of Sars-CoV-2 like Omicron are still around.

She said around 44 million Filipinos are eligible to get their booster shot but only 12 million individuals have been boosted so far.

As for the redefinition of the term “fully vaccinated individuals”, Vergeire said the Department of Health (DOH) is discussing the matter with the country’s health experts.

She said “our experts say the term seems really inappropriate”.

“Naghanap tayo ng practices na ginagawa sa ibang bansa. Ang CDC [US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] po ‘di nila ni-redefine ang kanilang fully vaccinated definition, dun po sa cards nila inilalagay din po ‘updated’ o ‘up-to-date’ ang kanilang bakuna (We searched for practices in other countries. The CDC did not redefine their fully vaccinated definition, rather they put ‘updated’ or ‘up-to-date’ in their vaccination cards),” she said. (PNA)