AROUND 303 workers of essential industries got their Covid-19 jabs during the launching of Mandaue City’s evening vaccinations on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021.
The evening vaccinations, which were held at the Mandaue City Cultural and Sports Complex, were first done last month as a way for Mandaue City’s Vaccination Operations Center (VOC) to know if more people would like to get inoculated at night.
During their dry run on Aug. 20, the City inoculated around 341 individuals.
Dr. Ligaya Dargantes, Mandaue VOC’s operations head, told Sunstar Cebu that they are very satisfied with the outcome of the official launch of the night vaccination even though they failed to achieved their target to inoculate 400 individuals.
They initially noticed that not all city residents were aware of the night vaccinations.
Dargantes said this could mean that there are still economic frontliners or individuals under the A4 category who were not informed or tapped into this initiative.
She also noticed a decrease in the number of participants in all of their five vaccination sites.
Aside from the Mandaue City Cultural Sports Complex, the City also established vaccination sites at the University of Cebu Lapu-Lapu Mandaue campus, at Parkmall, at JCenter Mall and at Pacific Mall.
She said they’d been inoculating an average of more than 1,000 individuals per day and per site a few months ago.
Now, the City is inoculating an average of 500 to 700 individuals per day, Dargantes added.
She said this could mean that the public has the mindset that the vaccines are always available and there is no need to rush to get one.
She said that they barely hit the 1,000 mark these days.
Aside from that, Dargantes said another challenge they face and may be facing during the night vaccination is the deployment of the medical personnel.
Earlier, Dargantes said they needed to hire more medical personnel to serve the night vaccination as they were dependent only on volunteers.
But as fewer people seem to want to get vaccinated these days, Dargantes said they have divided the existing vaccination personnel into day and night shifts.
But Dargantes said they are still able to effectively offer the night vaccination service to those workers who have difficulty getting jabbed during the regular daytime vaccination schedule.
Dargantes added the doctors working for the Mandaue City Health Office also volunteered in the night vaccination after its regular working hours. (KFD)