1M fully vaxxed in Cebu but ‘herd immunity’ may take 2 more years says health official
Over 3,400 individuals from the towns of Santa Fe, Bantayan, and Madridejos were inoculated during a two-day vaccination drive that aimed for the swift reopening of Bantayan Island’s badly hit tourism sector. | Photo from OPAV
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu on Tuesday, October 5, made another milestone in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
A total of 1,000,608 individuals here have already been fully vaccinated against the infection as of October 4, the Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) reported.
But due to the recent low turnout of vaccinees in various localities in Cebu, it may take another two years for the island to achieve herd immunity, a top health official said.
“With the current output that we have… we might need two years to achieve the herd immunity,” said Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, VVOC spokesperson.
Around 3.5 to 3.6 million people in Cebu are eligible to receive free COVID-19 vaccines from the national government.
In order to reach “herd immunity”, 70 percent of these figures, or approximately 2.5 million people, must be inoculated.
Loreche said they are looking at “ring immunization” to address the drop in the rates of individuals in Cebu vaccinated on a daily basis.
“We will now try to encourage all to be vaccinated and we can start on “ring immunization” as our way of handling this. Meaning, we (will) vaccinate more those areas with a low number of cases,” she explained.
If Cebu wants to achieve herd immunity before 2021 ends, it needs to administer at least 19,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in a day.
Based on the data from the VVOC, the island province could only register a daily average between 5,500 to 14,000 per day.
Cebu is one of the priority areas of the government’s COVID-19 vaccination drive outside Luzon. Rollout here began last March. /rcg
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