THE cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu will resume the vaccine rollout for senior citizens on Monday, May 17, 2021, after they received doses of Pfizer and Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccines from the Department of Health (DOH) 7 earlier this week.
In Mandaue City, senior citizens with comorbidities will be prioritized in the distribution of 1,170 doses of Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines that were delivered on Friday, May 14.
The Pfizer vaccines were immediately taken to the Chong Hua Hospital in Mandaue City, which has a cold chain storage for the vaccine.
Association of Barangay Councils president Ernie Manatad, Mandaue City Vaccine board chairman, told SunStar Cebu that the Pfizer vaccine will be administered at the hospital, which is also the vaccination site for the Project Balik Buhay vaccination initiative for the private sector.
However, Manatad clarified that the City will have its own vaccination team and a separate vaccination site.
He said they’ve identified and shortlisted senior citizens with comorbidities from the city’s 27 barangays who will receive the Pfizer vaccine.
The City also received 22,700 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine of which 700 will be used as the second dose for health care workers. The remainder will be injected to health care workers who have decided to get vaccinated and to senior citizens.
According to records of the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs, there are over 24,000 registered senior citizens in Mandaue City.
Manatad said they’ve already inoculated over 2,000 senior citizens.
With the latest shipment of vaccines, Manatad said the City could possibly inoculate 90 percent of the senior citizens and could start inoculating persons with comorbidities.
As of Friday, 447 persons with comorbidities were on the list, he said.
He said people in this priority group can still register online on the official Facebook page of the Mandaue City Vaccination Operations Center. They must submit a photo of their medical certificate or any proof of their medical condition, he said.
In Lapu-Lapu City, the DOH 7 delivered 7,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this week.
Mae Cherryl Tepait, immunization coordinator for the Lapu-Lapu City Health Office, said some will be injected as first dose to senior citizens with comorbidities, while 1,700 doses have been set aside for those who received their first dose in the first week of May.
A total of 2,044 medical frontliners working for the City have been vaccinated using the AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, she said. Also, 1,820 senior citizens and 329 persons with comorbidities have received the first dose of the vaccine.
According to Tepait, those who have received the first dose will have to wait 28 days to be injected with the second dose. (KFD / GCM / JKV)