Bishop Severo Caermare of Dipolog has joined other church leaders in the country in urging the people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus disease.
“I am urging you to voluntarily have yourselves vaccinated so we can all help in suppressing the spread of COVID-19),” said the bishop in a pastoral letter on August 6.
Bishop Caermare said that getting vaccinated “is not only for our own health, but also for our loved ones and the whole community, particularly the medical health workers.”
The bishop’s letter came as the local governments of Zamboanga City and the towns of Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay province announced the detection of the Delta variant of the virus.
The province of Zamboanga del Norte is currently under the more relaxed “general community quarantine” but its border checkpoints stepped up restrictions to prevent the entry of the new variant.
“We now require negative (swab) results for ‘authorized persons outside residence’ from other provinces,” said Rommel Jamolod of the provincial health office.
Those who deliver commodities and other essential supplies will also have to leave the province in 12 hours or be tested.
Since June, the provincial health office has been submitting samples to the Philippine Genome Center of the Health Department’s Research Institute for Tropical Medicine for early detection of COVID-19’s Delta variant.
“Thank God, no Delta variant was detected in the 115 samples submitted so far,” said Jamolod.
Bishop Caermare expressed regret that there are still those who refuse to be vaccinated because of misleading information about the vaccines.
“As long as it is made through scientific means that are not against our moral laws, it will never be a contradiction to our faith because the things in the world and the things in our faith come from the same God,” said the bishop.
He said even the Vatican and Pope Francis accepted the vaccines “as our defense against COVID-19 that has afflicted the world for more than a year now.”
