THE Department of Health in Davao Region (DOH-Davao) said on September 23, 2022, that the region has not yet reached the target 70 percent herd immunity against Covid-19.

DOH-Davao vaccination team head Dr. Janis Olavides said during a media forum that the region is still at 86.7 percent vaccination rate of the targeted 70 percent.

This is equivalent to 3,294,161 fully vaccinated individuals against Covid-19 based on the DOH-Davao vaccine statistics as of September 19. It is approximately 500,000 shy away from reaching the target of 3,796,830 million for herd immunity.

“What we want to see is 100 percent of the 70 percent target. So gamay na lang man, pero gusto gihapon nato (We only need a little more so we still want to achieve our target)... We are pushing. We wanted by 2022 na sana (hopefully), na-reach na nato ang (we can reach) 70 percent,” Olavides said.

All of the provinces in the region, including Davao City, have fully vaccinated more than half of their target population. Still, so far, only Davao City has a coverage of more than 100 percent vaccination rate which is 1,336,929 100 fully vaccinated persons out of the target population of 1,327,323.

Davao Oriental has the second highest coverage with 87.7 percent coverage or 369,582 fully vaccinated out of 421,316 target, followed by Davao del Norte with 84.1 percent or 629,285 fully vaccinated out of 747,915 target population.

The rest of the provinces have less than 80 percent coverage. Davao de Oro is at 76.2 percent with 416,018 fully vaccinated out of the 545,915 target, followed by Davao Occidental at 73.5 percent coverage with 176,466 fully vaccinated out of 240,190 target population, and Davao del Sur has 71.2 percent coverage with 365,881 out of 514,171.

Olavides said there are still many unvaccinated children belonging to the population group of five to 11 years old, adding that only 32.6 percent of the said population group are vaccinated in the region.

“It’s only Davao Occidental and Davao Oriental who have reached more than 50 percent but the rest of the provinces, even Davao City, wala pa gyod kaabot og 50 percent (have not yet reached 50 percent),” she said.