THE Cebu City Vaccination Operations Center (VOC) has suspended the vaccination of senior citizens starting 12 p.m., April 23, 2021.
This, as the more than 5,000 doses of Sinovac allocated for the city’s seniors have all been used up after five days of vaccinating the elderly.
The first day of senior citizens’ vaccination was on April 19, 2021.
Cebu City Councilor David Tumulak said the vaccinations will resume as soon as the Department of Health Central Visayas (DOH 7) delivers a new batch of vaccines.
Cebu City Health Department officer-in-charge Jeffrey Ibones said there has been no word yet from the DOH 7 when the next delivery will be.
Cebu City has opened three vaccine sites and plans to open more next week to fast track the vaccine rollout.
But Ibones said the shortage of vaccine supplies remains a problem.
In Mandaue City, the Vaccine Board fell behind its schedule to administer 424 vaccines to senior citizens on April 23 as only 301 of the city’s elderly showed up to be vaccinated on Friday at the Mandaue City Cultural and Sports Complex.
Ernie Manatad, chairman of Mandaue’s Vaccine Board, told SunStar Cebu that reaching their target number of vaccinees has always been a challenge since the vaccine rollout for senior citizens.
Manatad said they plan to administer all remaining vaccines within the week so that they can move to create another vaccination rollout plan for the new allocation that will arrive.
He said most of Mandaue City’s barangays failed to reach the allocated slots for the shortlisted senior citizens to be vaccinated because most had a sudden change of mind or lacked interest to submit themselves to vaccination.
Some senior citizens also expressed willingness but said they had other prior appointments.
Manatad said the City could extend the inoculation schedule to consume the allocated vaccines.
With the remaining 123 doses of Sinovac, Manatad said they will continue to administer the vaccines on April 26 in Barangays Looc, Guizo, Ibabao-Estancia, Tingub, Basak, and Mantuyong.
Around 900 senior citizens in Mandaue City were vaccinated during the first three days of the vaccination program.
As of April 22, Manatad said more than 15,000 senior citizens were registered in Mandaue City’s vaccination master list.
In Lapu-Lapu City, 433 out of 3,500 preregistered senior citizens were vaccinated, records from the DOH 7 showed.
Central Visayas
Meanwhile, DOH 7 recorded only 5,793 senior citizens in Central Visayas have been vaccinated against Covid-19.
The number represents 1.01 percent of the prelisted senior citizens in the region.
Despite the reported vaccine shortages in some local government units (LGUs), the DOH 7 said no additional stocks have arrived from the Central Office.
As of April 14, 2021, Central Visayas received a total of 178,560 vaccine doses (30,000-AZ and 148,560 for Sinovac) against Covid-19 which have all been distributed to hospitals regionwide.
Earlier, Jaime Bernadas, DOH 7 director, said more doses will be coming in by the end of April and in May.
DOH 7 Spokesperson Mary Jean Loreche reported that 572, 626 senior citizens in the region have registered for vaccination against Covid-19.
Of the number, 168,832 are residents of Cebu Province of which only 681 have been vaccinated.
In Negros Oriental, only four out of the province’s 128,025 prelisted senior citizens received their first dose.
In Siquijor, 241 out of 11,322 pre-listed senior citizens were inoculated.
Vaccination for senior citizens in Bohol has yet to start.
Health workers
Meanwhile, 62 percent of healthcare workers or 81,767 of the 131,781 total eligible individuals belonging to priority A1 of the Covid vaccine rollout have been inoculated.
Of these, 51,554 received Sinovac while 30,213 were inoculated with the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine.(JJL, KFD, WBS)