300 Cebu City EOC personnel get vaccinated

Cebu City Councilor Joel Garganera gets vaccinated to encourage EOC personnel to follow suit.| Photo courtesy of EOC

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Personnel of the Cebu City Emergency Operations Center (EOC) have also undergone vaccination against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Councilor Joel Garganera, deputy chief implementor of the EOC, said they had completed the vaccination of half the EOC personnel or at least 300 personnel by Friday, March 12, 2021.

Garganera said those vaccinated included members of the quick response extraction team (QRT), contact tracers, swabbers and the cluster heads because they most likely would handle the COVID-19 patients themselves.

The councilor was also vaccinated to encourage the EOC staff to do the same because some of the personnel especially the quick response team and contact tracers were hesitant to have themselves vaccinated.

“Sa EOC, dili ako’y ga una. We have our nurses, but there were some resistance from our QRT, contact tracers so Dr. Gerardo Aquino asked me to lead so kadtong mga nag duha duha mosunod na. Mao nga nisunod dayon si Harold Alcontin sa QRT,” said Garganera.

(In the EOC, I was the first to be vaccinated. We have nurses, but there were some resistance from our QRT, contact tracers so Dr. Gerardo Aquino asked me to lead so that those who had doubts about the vaccination would follow. So Harold Alcontin of the QRT then followed.)

Dispelling the fear, the EOC was able to vaccinate around 300 of its personnel, but Garganera said they were targetting all personnel in the coming weeks.

He said that Cebu City EOC had 600 personnel.

The councilor said that the fears of the personnel reflected the fear of the general public, and this would be the challenge of the city government to encourage more people to get vaccinated.

Read: Vaccine update in Central Visayas: 2,341 healthcare workers receive Sinovac

The EOC personnel were inoculated with the Sinovac vaccine from the national government allocation to Cebu City.

Garganera said that it would be important for the EOC to be vaccinated because they were continuously in contact with the COVID-19 patients, albeit in protective gears, from swabbing to transfer.

Read: Vaccines key to lowering COVID-19 cases in Cebu City —EOC

The city currently has 2,739 active cases of the virus with at least 233 new cases recorded on March 12, 2021.

The EOC said in recent reports that there was a downtrend in the cases as recoveries were rising, but this was not a reason to be complacent.

The EOC also said that the vaccination would be important in reducing the transmission of the cases.

/dbs

Read: No ‘serious symptoms’ on 42 VSMMC workers with ‘mild reaction’ after Sinovac jab

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