IN CENTRAL Visayas, 60,460 individuals have been fully vaccinated against Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), as of Monday, May 24, 2021, the Department of Health (DOH) 7 reported on Tuesday, May 25.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, DOH 7 spokesperson, said 52,205 of those fully vaccinated are health care workers (priority A1), while 6,608 are senior citizens (priority A2). The remaining 1,647 are persons with comorbidities (priority A3).
A total of 2,825 were vaccinated under the private-public partnership Project Balik Buhay vaccination initiative.
“We have to be vaccinated at this time when our active Covid-19 cases are low,” Loreche said.
According to the 2015 census, the region had a population of 7,396,898 people.
Central Visayas, as of May 24, had 3,360 active cases. The majority were in Negros Oriental with 1,085 cases, followed by Bohol with 1,001 cases.
The cities of Cebu, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu had 457, 176 and 154 active cases, respectively.
Cebu Province had 476 active cases, while Siquijor had 11.
The DOH 7 said 131,781 health care workers are on the masterlist for vaccination, of which 97,327 (73.9 percent) already received their first dose.
Aside from the 6,608 fully vaccinated senior citizens in the region, the government, as of May 24, still has to administer the second dose to 35,331 others who already received their first doses.
There are 549,444 senior citizens in the region who registered to be vaccinated.
Meanwhile, 4,611 doses of the 14,625 doses of Pfizer BioNtech vaccine to the region have already been consumed.
A total of 2,797 doses were given to individuals with comorbidities; 1,374 to senior citizens; and 440 to health care workers.
Among the common side effects experienced by those injected with the Pfizer vaccine are headache, dizziness, increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure.
The death toll from Covid-19 in the Philippines breached 20,000 on May 25, as the DOH reported 36 additional mortalities.
Ten cases that were previously tagged as recoveries were reclassified as deaths after final validation, DOH said in its case bulletin issued Tuesday.
As of May 25, DOH said 20,019 individuals had died from Covid-19 nationwide.
The case fatality rate declined to 1.68 percent as deaths remained low compared to the new cases, which continued to average more than 5,000 a day over the last seven days.
On Tuesday, May 25, however, new infections declined to less than 4,000 as testing output fell, with 10 laboratories failing to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System.
There were only 32,112 samples tested for Sars-CoV-2 on May 23, of which 13.1 percent yielded positive results. The positivity rate remains above 12 percent, more than double the World Health Organization benchmark of five percent.
The DOH case bulletin listed 3,972 new cases, which brought the country’s total caseload to 1,188,672. Six duplicates were removed from the total case count.
There were also 4,659 new recoveries, bringing the total to 1,120,452.
With recoveries exceeding the new cases, the number of active cases in hospitals and isolation facilities decreased further to 48,201, the lowest since the 48,157 cases on March 14.
While new cases are declining nationwide, infections are rising in Mimaropa, especially in Palawan Province.
Mayor Mario Reyes Jr. of Coron, Palawan said eight barangays out of 23 were placed under lockdown on May 12 due to rising Covid-19 cases.
Reyes said in a Laging Handa briefing Tuesday that they have intensified contact tracing efforts to manage the situation.
Based on the DOH’s Covid-19 tracker, the epidemic curve for Palawan shows a steep increase in new cases. The province’s four-week moving average increased to 146 as of May 12 from only 15 at the end of March 2021.
Nationwide, the regions with the highest 14-day running total of new cases as of May 24 were the National Capital Region with 16,062, Calabarzon with 12,837, Central Luzon with 8,918, Western Visayas with 4,754 and Zamboanga Peninsula with 2,944.
Among the cities and provinces, the highest two-week running total are in Quezon City (3,789), Cavite (3,734), Laguna (3,414), Bulacan (2,764) and Batangas (2,414). (WBS / MVI / SunStar Philippines)