The Philippine National Police (PNP) will coordinate and partner with the Department of Health (DOH) to convince the people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).

PNP chief, Gen. Guillermo Eleazar said Wednesday he is eyeing to repeat the success of the information drive initiated within the PNP which used videos and fact sheets from the DOH in convincing police officers to get the jabs.

“We in the PNP believe that the aggressive information drive is necessary to counter all the wrong information and the disinformation that our kababayans see especially in the social media on the safety and efficiency of the available vaccines,” Eleazar said in a statement.

This came in the wake of the transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant which was already detected in the country.

Eleazar said through this information drive, the number of PNP personnel who signified intention to be inoculated has reached 93 percent from only 51 percent during the first survey conducted in February.

In May, Eleazar directed all police commanders to maximize the PNP’s Oplan Bandillo in assisting the information drive on Covid-19 vaccination for the people in their respective areas of responsibility.

Oplan Bandillo is a community awareness and information dissemination program against criminal elements and was eventually used to encourage people to observe the minimum health safety standard protocol since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In implementing Oplan Bandillo, local police forces use megaphones and speaker systems during their regular beat patrol to communicate with people in the community. (PNA)