THE Department of Health Central Visayas (DOH 7) will initiate a fourth round of the National Vaccination Days (NVD) against coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in March this year.Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DOH 7 chief pathologist and spokesperson for the Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC), said they will use the fourth round of the NVD to improve the vaccination rates for the region’s senior citizens, aside from their usual program of inoculating unvaccinated individuals and providing booster shots to those who have already secured complete shots.Loreche said that Central Visayas, except for Siquijor, was not included among the areas in the country that have been placed under Alert Level 1 status or new normal due to the low turnout of senior citizens in Covid-19 vaccination sites.Loreche said in order for a local government unit (LGU) to be considered under the low minimal risk case classification, less than 50 percent capacity utilization rate, full vaccination of 70 percent of its total target population, and full vaccination of 80 percent of the target population for the Priority Group A2 (senior citizens) must be achieved.Though the three highly urbanized cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu have already reached more than 70 percent of its target population, they failed to vaccinate at least 80 percent of their senior citizens, Loreche said.As of Feb. 26, 2022, data from the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) showed that Central Visayas had only a 51.78 percent vaccination rate of the 677,108 target population of senior citizens.Only Siquijor was able to reach the needed percentage with 91.49 percent from 11,111 target senior citizens.Cebu City had vaccinated 76.04 percent of the 81,980 senior citizens it needed to vaccinate.The cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu had vaccinated 68.33 percent and 50.62 percent of the 32,228 and 36,265 populations of this age group, respectively.Cebu Province was able to vaccinate around 41.02 percent, the lowest vaccination rate for senior citizens with a 107,501 target among the provinces and three highly urbanized cities.Bohol and Negros Oriental, on the other hand, were also at 54.72 percent and 47.94 percent out of 187,486 and 126,954 target senior citizens to vaccinate.“Kung sa grado po ito, bumagsak po tayo sa ating A2 or sa atin pong senior citizens. So kulelat po tayo pagdating sa senior citizens, pero ‘wag po tayong mawalan ng pag-asa,” she said.(If it was a grade, we failed in vaccinating our A2 or senior citizens. But even if we are failing, let’s not lose hope.)Meanwhile, Loreche said Cebu is already low risk in terms of case classification.Loreche stressed that the capacity utilization rates in Cebu remained safe, saying that only 15.7 percent was noted in private hospitals in Cebu while 27.4 percent in public hospitals.