Minglanilla Mayor Elanito Peña gets jabbed with the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine during the town’s vaccine rollout on Tuesday, March 23, 2021, at the Minglanilla Rural Health Unit (RHU).
CEBU CITY, Philippines – Minglanilla Mayor Elanito Peña on Tuesday, March 23, confirmed that he was injected with the first dose of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine from AstraZeneca.
This despite prevailing protocols that healthcare workers, and not local officials, should be prioritized in the current vaccine rollout.
In a phone interview with reporters, Peña said Minglanilla began rolling out its supply of AstraZeneca vaccines on Tuesday for its healthcare workers at the town’s Rural Health Unit (RHU).
Peña also said he decided to join and have himself vaccinated, considering that he is a ‘frontliner’ as the chief of the municipality’s anti-COVID-19 task force.
He added that before he was administered AstraZeneca’s vaccine, he consulted with other municipal officials, including doctors, whether it was okay to be inoculated.
“I am also a frontliner, being the head of our COVID-19 team or task force. The team also met and discussed the vaccination prior to the rollout, and they, including some doctors, said they see no problem to have me vaccinated because I was also a frontliner,” said Peña in Cebuano.
Over 160 doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines from the national government were allocated to Minglanilla, the mayor said.
Peña also said he did not experience any adverse reactions after getting inoculated with AstraZeneca.
Minglanilla is a first-class municipality located 19 kilometers south of Cebu City.
But according to the Philippine National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 vaccines, the present rollout of AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines in the country are intended only for medical healthcare frontliners, and local officials like Peña are not included.
Peña, for his part, however, said he was unaware of such a priority list.
Sought for their comment, the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) called on elected officials and politicians to ‘patiently wait for their turn to be vaccinated against COVID-19’.
“Mayors and other politicians are still not included in the Subgroup A which are the healthcare frontliners,” said Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson of DOH-7.
Loreche also said the regional health office was not aware or consulted about Peña being vaccinated with AstraZeneca.
“We enjoin our local officials and all other members of the various sectors that are not yet in the priority listing to patiently wait. Soon, it will be your turn, and let’s all fall in line in order not to jeopardize our vaccination program,” she added.
Central Visayas received a total of 30,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the national government. These were part of the over 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines European nations donated to the Philippine government.
The rollout of AstraZeneca vaccines began last March 6 in Metro Manila and a week later, in Cebu.
But recently, DOH’s central office ordered all hospitals that received their supply of vaccines from the British drugmaker to use all their allocation by March 24 or these will be recalled. /rcg
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