1.8 million unutilized COVID-19 vaccines in Region 7

By: Morexette Marie B. Erram - 3 years ago

STOCK PHOTO: Vials of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are pictured at St. Mary’s Hospital, in Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Health officials in Central Visayas continue to reassure the public that the region still has enough supply of COVID-19 vaccines amid a decline in the number of individuals getting jabbed daily.

This after the Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) on Wednesday, October 13 reported that there are 1,818,454 doses of COVID-19 vaccines that remained unutilized as of October 10.

In turn, VVOC urged local governments to administer these shots as soon as possible.

“We have adequate and an overabundance of vaccines but these are not moving. Kaya, we are urging and calling our LGUs (local government units) to get more people to become vaccinated,” said Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, VVOC spokesperson.

Of the 1.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines that are yet to be administered, most of these – or 704, 885 doses – came from Cebu province.

Bohol, with 354, 117 unused doses of vaccines, came second. It was followed by Negros Oriental with 315,328 doses and Cebu City with 258,812 doses.

The cities of Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue still have 64,574 doses and 86,924 doses in their inventories respectively.

The supply of COVID-19 vaccines in Siquijor stood at 33,814 doses as of October 10.

“It is now on the hands of our LGUs on how to manage and speed up our vaccination drive. This has to be an LGU-driven activity and it is up to our leaders to have everyone vaccinated,” added Loreche.

Central Visayas has received around 4.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, both as donations and procurements from the national government.

Based on the same report from VVOC, a total of 1,433,643 from the region have managed to complete their inoculation schedules, and are already considered as ‘fully vaccinated’.

The government is aiming to vaccinate roughly 5.6 million people in Central Visayas. /rcg