A doctor shows the box of a COVID-19 vaccine produced by Chinese company Sinovac Biotech at the Sao Lucas Hospital, in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil. (Photo by SILVIO AVILA / AFP)
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City wants more Sinovac vaccines so that these can be allocated to mountain barangay residents.
This was the statement of Acting Mayor Michael Rama in a press conference on Friday, June 11, 2021, in his update on the vaccination program of the city.
For now, the city government has been receiving allocations of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Sputnik vaccines, but all of these vaccines need a certain storage requirement that may not be possible when transporting the vaccines to the mountain barangays.
“Nangayo tag Sinovac so we can bring it to the mountain barangays. We want to bring the vaccines closer to the residents so they don’t have to travel far to get vaccinated,” said Rama.
The other vaccines need colder storage making it difficult to transport to the barangays further from the urban areas as the vaccines may spoil on the way.
Sinovac needs only regular vaccine storage and can easily be transported to the mountain barangays without the fear of spoiling the vaccines on the way.
Rama said he has asked the Department of Health (DOH) for more Sinovac doses allotted to Cebu City and he hopes that when the Sinovac doses arrive in the country, more will be allotted to the city.
As of June 11, 2021, some vaccination sites in Cebu City have temporarily stopped operating because the first-dose vaccines have already run out.
Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, the officer-in-charge of the City Health Department (CHD), said that only two sites are operational, Robinsons Galleria and University of Cebu (UC) J. Alcantara, for second dose inoculations.
If the city will get more doses of the vaccines from the 200,000 vaccines that recently arrived in Central Visayas, the CHD will reopen the sites immediately to continue the vaccination.
“Maynta mahatagan na tag vaccines aron makapadayon ta sa atong vaccination kay layo pa ta sa atong target,” said Ibones.
The city is still at 10 percent of its plan to inoculate 700,000 residents to achieve herd immunity. /rcg