Dizon warns public vs. complacency despite vaccine rollout

MANILA – The vaccine rollout should not be a reason to be complacent and the public must still adhere to minimum health standards, testing czar Secretary Vince Dizon said on Sunday.

The Covid-19 vaccine is an additional protection but safety protocols must still be followed.

“What we all have to understand, hindi porke nagsimula na tayo ng pagbabakuna eh eto na ‘yung solusyon natin sa Covid. Hindi po. (It’s not because we started the vaccination, it would be the solution against the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s not),” Dizon said on the sidelines after the vaccination rollout at the Qualimed Hospital in Santa Rosa City, Laguna.

“Prevention, detection, isolation, and treatment should continuously be observed,” he added.

Wearing a mask and face shield as well as physical distancing are the most effective ways to avoid the Covid-19 infection, particularly in the areas where surge of cases is happening, Dizon reminded.

He said detection in high-risk areas, like the National Capital Region and Regions 4 (Calabarzon), Region 7 (Central Visayas) and 11 (Davao Region) and Cordillera Administrative Region, must be intensified.

“Nire-review namin ngayon ang mga desisyon na nagawa noong mga nakaraang linggo, dahil meron pong malaking pagkakaiba nung ginawa yung mga desisyon na iyon na magluluwag tayo ng konti (We are now reviewing the decisions we made for the past weeks, because there’s a huge difference when we made those decisions to relax rules a bit),” Dizon added.

“Ang kaso po natin nung nagawa ang mga desisyon na yon ay 1,500 lang. Ngayon po ay lampas 3,000 na so kailangan po felixble tayo. Re-review-hin po natin yan at kailangan natin sabayan kung anuman intervention katulad ng mga (Our cases when we did that decision was only 1,500 but now we have more than 3,000 cases so we need to become flexible while reviewing these and we need to impose interventions such as) localized or very small lockdown, street lockdown, barangay lockdown, etc.”

He assured there are enough isolation facilities on standby amid the spike of Covid-19 cases.

There are still 36,043 active infections as of Sunday, including 3,276 new cases.

A total of 545,853 out of 594,412 cases have recovered. On Sunday, 10,516 recoveries were recorded.