Philippines rolls out booster shots for fully vaccinated tourism workers

Dhaka: The Department of Tourism of Philippines is now giving booster shots to fully vaccinated tourism workers as an added protection against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Most regions in the Philippines have already attained above 90 per cent vaccination rates among active and eligible tourism workers.

“We are glad to see the willingness of our tourism workers to get vaccinated grow over the past few months. We continue to encourage them to avail themselves of the free vaccine as this is a critical component for the industry to rebound and thrive in the new normal,” said the country’s Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat.

The tourism chief also mentioned that booster Covid-19 shots are now being rolled out to tourism workers in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Boracay Island.

Eventually, the booster shots drive for tourism workers will also administered in other tourism destinations like Baguio City and Davao.

According to the DOT NCR Office's data, 50 per cent or 12,693 out of the region's 25,386 hotel workers have already got their Covid-19 booster shots.

Moreover, in Boracay alone, the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF) has committed to allocate 20,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to be given as booster shots to the island's tourism workers.

As of 2021 end, a total of 282,780 individuals, or 88.38 per cent of the country’s initial target population of 325,489 tourism workers from various tourism-related industries, have already been inoculated against coronavirus.

This leaves only 12.17 per cent or 38,931 individuals who are yet to receive their first dose.