San Miguel Corporation (SMC) has started administering company-procured vaccines to its workforce, after taking delivery of 150,000 vaccines it acquired from Astra Zeneca under its P1 billion Ligtas Lahat vaccination program.

The vaccines are good for 75,000 individuals, enough to cover all direct and indirect workers across SMC’s nationwide network.

“With the arrival of our vaccines, we are now assured that we can vaccinate all our employees, consultants, and support workers across the San Miguel Group, bringing us closer to our goal of herd immunity in our workplaces and facilities nationwide,” said SMC president Ramon S. Ang.

 “This also means we no longer have to rely on our national government and LGUs, who have been instrumental in getting many of our essential workers vaccinated. We can now take care of our own, and government can continue vaccinating more essential workers and priority groups to help boost our economy.”

SMC started administering the vaccines last Tuesday to 1,000 employees of external partners at its sports complex-turned vaccination site in Pasig City. Vaccination activities for employees and indirect workers will follow at company vaccination sites nationwide.

Ang likewise thanked the government for facilitating the delivery of its vaccines, despite supply challenges in many parts of the world.

Prior to the delivery of vaccines, SMC had partnered with LGUs where its operations are located, and assembled several batches of its employees to receive their vaccines under the A4 of essential workers priority group.

 “We thank the LGUs and the IATF for supplying us with vaccines for our A4 workers in various areas while we waited for our vaccine supplies. We have learned a lot from our partnership with the LGUs and we know we have to act quickly to further help the country in reducing its transmission amid the emergence of the Delta variant,” he said.

SMC has also hired and deployed more than a hundred medical nurses and doctors to various LGU vaccination sites to augment government medical teams and enable a more efficient rollout of vaccination in more areas.

Ang said the company had also conducted information drives to “better educate our employees on the benefits of vaccination and help address hesitancy.”

“We are proud that a very high percentage of our employees nationwide have signed up for the vaccine. With our experience helping LGUS in their vaccination rollout, and with the partnerships we’ve established with healthcare providers and various vaccination sites, I believe we are more than ready to stage an efficient, effective, and safe rollout of our vaccination program,” Ang said.  “We agree with the government’s view that the creation of safe spaces in every organization or every unit of society through so-called micro herd immunity will help us win over this virus. In San Miguel, we ask for the full cooperation of everyone to make the workplace even safer and give an added layer of protection as we hope to gradually scale up our operations in the months to come.”