May 13, 2021
To our friends and colleagues across the Filinvest Group,
We hope that you are well and safe.
COVID-19 remains and continues to affect our daily lives, so we begin this message by requesting you to remain careful, vigilant, and to continue to follow the health and safety protocols to fight the spread of the infection.
As an immediate response, each company under the Filinvest Group has established its own Med-Help and HR employee assistance facility which can assist you with any COVID-19 health-related questions or concerns. Our Med-Help groups can help in case of COVID-19 infection and assist you in contact-tracing activities. Our HR groups have also partnered with Medicard to provide you easy access to professional COVID care right in the comfort of your home via the Medicard TeleHome Care Program.
We know how difficult these times are, and we assure you that we are continuously looking for ways to help and overcome this crisis together.
Be Part of the FilVax Program
We now take this opportunity to inform you about our Filinvest COVID-19 Vaccination Program (FilVax), which was developed to provide COVID-19 vaccines to all employees of the Filinvest Group for free.
In partnership with the Department of Health (DOH) and the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Filinvest Group has procured 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, which is sufficient to complete the first and second doses for all our employees and includes those that will be donated to the government.
In this connection, we are delighted to update you that the first delivery of our ordered AstraZeneca vaccines is expected to arrive by the end of June. Our goal is to start our mass employee vaccination efforts by mid-July.
We have already engaged Zuellig Pharma to handle the logistics for the vaccine storage and transport and are also in talks with potential medical partners who will help us with the actual vaccine administration process, provide the necessary manpower, and manage the data registry program required by DOH. We are also planning to set up mega-vaccination sites in key cities like Muntinlupa, Makati, Manila, Pasay, Quezon City, Clark, Cebu, Davao, and Cagayan De Oro, where most of our group’s offices and branches are located.
As you may already know, the DOH has approved the continuation of the use of AstraZeneca vaccines for ages 18 years old and above, following the recommendations of the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the DOH All Experts Group on Vaccines.
We are gearing up to implement the FilVax program in the quickest and most orderly manner possible, but we need your cooperation to make this program successful.
Register with the FilVax-ORS
At this point, we strongly urge everyone to complete your registration using our FilVax Online Registration System (FilVax-ORS) at the soonest possible time. This includes those that may have already received their first or second doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, as we will use this system as the basis to finalize the list of employees who will join the FilVax Program and avail of our vaccine. This will also help us determine the number of doses to be allocated to each of our mega-vaccination sites.
To emphasize, registration with the FilVax-ORS applies to everyone, including those that have already been vaccinated or are scheduled to do so. This will enable us to allocate and distribute our vaccine supply more accurately and efficiently, and to offer vaccines to other persons related to our group.
On or before May 17, you will receive an email containing your Username and Temporary Password to access the FilVax-ORS. You will need to change your Temporary Password to ensure the protection of your personal data. Please note that the FilVax-ORS will only be available to accept registration until May 31, 2021 so please register as soon as you can.
We will send you another email once our vaccination sites are up and the vaccine administrator system is operational. This email will include your vaccination schedule and venue.
The Best Vaccine is the Available Vaccine
We understand that many local government units (LGUs) have already started their vaccination programs. If your LGU is one of these, we encourage you to avail of this opportunity especially if your LGU can give you a vaccine schedule ahead of ours.
Vaccination gives us an added layer of protection against the virus. By getting vaccinated, we not only protect ourselves, but also our homes, and our workplaces. Most important of all, we do our part to fight back and weaken the virus's ability to spread and do further harm. You may wish to view this DOH video for further information about the urgent need for and benefits of being vaccinated now.
Together, we can overcome this crisis as one community, as one Filinvest Family. On behalf of the entire Filinvest Group, we wish you and your family continued safety and good health, as we look forward to a much brighter, vaccine-protected future ahead.
Jonathan Gotianun
Chairman of the Board
L. Josephine Gotianun Yap
President & CEO