VOC recommends start of roll-out for senior citizens by Monday

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Vaccination Operations Center (VOC) is recommending the roll-out for senior citizens by Monday, April 19, 2021.

Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, the acting city health officer, said the turnout for the last day of the roll-out for the health workers today, April 15, 2021, has been low as most of the registered health workers were already vaccinated.

“Nahuman-human na gyod atong health workers. If naa man gani, gamay nalang. Ang uban man gud kay basin navaccinated na sa ilang medical facility so mas nigamay na ang atong givaccinate,” said Ibones.

More than 6,000 of the 7,000 registered health workers were already vaccinated and the city government said the turnout has been well.

There were 400 doses left of the vaccines today and the VOC has agreed to propose the start of the senior citizen roll-out on Monday.

This proposal will be presented to Vice Mayor Michael Rama, the lead convenor of the city’s vaccination program, for the final decision in the next few days.

“Nagmeeting mi unsaon nato pagdistribute sa senior citizens, pero siempre ato paning ipresent,” said Ibones.

Ibones assured that the vaccines will not be wasted and will be allocated to properly to the beneficiaries no matter what.

Should the senior citizens’ vaccination will push through, the vaccination for the remaining health workers will continue as well as long as there are still health workers to be vaccinated.

As of now, some 23,000 senior citizens have already registered for the program with 10,000 having enlisted through house-to-house survey and 13,000 through online registration.

Ibones said this means that the public has begun to trust the vaccination program. He hopes more senior citizens will register in the coming days. /rcg