Rama promises to intensify city’s vaccination efforts to reach 96K target

CEBU CITY, Philippines — They may have failed to administer 32, 000 doses on the first day of the National Vaccination Days, but the Cebu City government still has two days left to work on their target for the three-day event.

Mayor Michael Rama said they are now looking for means on how to improve the city’s vaccination turnout.

Cebu City set a 32, 000 target per day or a total of 96, 000 for the three-day national vaccination drive that opened on Monday, November 29.

But the city only managed to administer 25, 000 doses which is 7, 000 doses short of its supposed target on day 1.

Still, Rama said, it is not yet too late for the city to reach more Cebuanos.

Rama said is scheduled to meet with officials who are involved in the vax drive to identify means on how else they can encourage city residents to get jabbed.

“Atong paningkamotan, but if dili man gyod, wala man ta naghuna-huna ana. Atong goal nga mas daghan ang mavaccinan, kung molapas ta mas maayo,” says Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, head of the City Health Department.

Ibones admitted that they experienced technical problems on Monday, after their server crashed because of the surge in registration, which may have contributed to the city’s failure to reach its 32, 000 target.

But they already had the matter fixed and are now ready to accommodate new registrants.

Another concern that they had to look into was on the deployment of their personnel.  He said that personnel assigned in some of the city’s 90 vaccination sites were overwhelmed by the surge of vaccinnees on Monday.

Ibones said that as of noontime on Tuesday, they were already able to vaccinate 58 percent of the city’s target population.  They hope to increase this to 70 percent in the coming days to achieve the city’s herd immunity target.

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