50K more HCWs in CV to be vaccinated

DOH-7: The number of HCWs qualified for COVID-19 vaccine in CV has increased to 89,000

LOOK: A nurse vaccinates a fellow nurse during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout for healthcare workers in UC Medical Center in Mandaue City. | CDN Digital Photo by Morexette Marie Erram

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Central Visayas still needs to vaccinate more than 50,000 healthcare workers as the number qualified to receive free COVID-19 vaccines increased.

The Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7) on Tuesday, March 24, posted an accomplishment rate of 42 percent in its COVID-19 immunization coverage among medical health workers as of March 23.

This meant that they have already administered the first dose of vaccines to 37,135 healthcare workers.

But the region still has to inoculate over 51,000 more to achieve a 100 percent success rate as the number of eligible recipients of free vaccines from the national government increased to 89,017.

To recall, DOH-7 initially identified around 54,000 healthcare workers in the region who can be vaccinated for free.

READ MORE: COVID Vaccine Watch: 12k healthcare workers in Region 7 receive Sinovac

“This is so because our survey identifying health workers who are qualified to receive the vaccines is still ongoing, and we have also included those down A1.7 of our sub-priority groups,” explained Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson of DOH-7.

Loreche was referring to Priority A1 of the national government’s Philippine National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 vaccines.

Under this group, all healthcare frontliners in COVID-19 referral hospitals, public and private hospitals and infirmaries providing COVID-19 care, isolation and quarantine facilities, other hospitals and facilities not catering to COVID-19 cases, government-owned primary care-based facilities, stand-alone facilities, clinics, and diagnostic centers, and other facilities, and closed institutions and settings such as jails, orphanages, rehabilitation centers will be prioritized in the ongoing vaccine rollout.

READ MORE: LIST: Priority groups for government’s Covid-19 vaccination program

AstraZeneca deadline

Central Visayas was allocated over 110,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines from two brands — CoronaVac and AstraZeneca.

All of these are part of the donations the Chinese government and European nations gave to the Philippines.

READ MORE: Duterte OKs use of 525,600 AstraZeneca vaccines as first dose for health workers

Recently, DOH’s central office ordered all hospitals and other health institutions supplied with AstraZeneca vaccines to exhaust their doses by March 24 otherwise these will be recalled, and reassigned to other areas in the country which might need more vaccine doses.

The regional health office here, however, was not able to achieve its target of using up all 30,000 AstraZeneca vaccines by March 23.

READ MORE: DOH-7 targets to complete AstraZeneca jab by Mar. 23

Loreche said that as of March 23, only 12, 728 vaccines manufactured by the British pharmaceutical giant were administered to healthcare workers.

This meant that they still need to use the remaining 16,000 doses in a short amount of time. As a result also, DOH-7 decided to extend the vaccination schedule involving AstraZeneca vaccines to March 24.

But Loreche also pointed out that delay in the reporting of hospitals’ inoculation schedule could be a factor in the slow pace of AstraZeneca’s rollout.

/dbs

READ MORE: Barangay health workers in Cebu City finally get COVID-19 vaccines