More than 9K employees in Cebu benefit from PBB vaccine program

SINCE the start of its vaccination initiative on April 20, 2021, the Project Balik Buhay (PBB) has administered a total of 11,552 doses of Covid-19 vaccines to employees of companies in Cebu that registered and were approved by the Department of Health (DOH) 7 and their respective local government units.

Eligible under the program are health care employees and employees who are senior citizens or have comorbidities.

The DOH 7 reported that as of Thursday, May 20, 9,250 employees have already received their first dose under the private-public vaccination initiative, while 2,302 have received their second dose.

Only 180 vaccinees reported adverse events following immunization, most of which were minor.

Employees from Mandaue City made up the bulk of vaccinees with 4,837 getting the first dose and 1,768 getting the second dose. Employees from Cebu City came second with 2,894 getting the first dose and 360 getting the second dose. Employees from Lapu-Lapu City came next with 1,159 getting the first dose and 37 getting the second dose. Lastly, 360 employees from Cebu Province received the first dose and 137 received the second dose.

The PBB vaccination program is being administered at Chong Hua Hospital-Mandaue, Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital in Cebu City, Visayas Community Medical Center, University of Cebu Medical Center, Mactan Doctors’ Hospital, Alliance Regional Care Hospital in Lapu-Lapu City and Mendero Medical Center in Consolacion.

Last Thursday, the PBB announced that it will reopen its registration to facilitate applications for people’s organizations, micro and small establishments, sari-sari store vendors, tricycle drivers and other community groups.

The pre-listing for companies ended on April 30, as the PBB completed the first-dose vaccination of the first batch of employees from the company masterlist (a total of 246 companies with 3,500 employees belonging to these groups: health care workers, senior citizens and those with comorbidities) during the last week of April.

The PBB vaccine rollout for the second batch started on May 3.

A total of 71.6 percent of health care workers nationwide, or 94,320, have been vaccinated under the government’s vaccination program. Of that number, 48,055 have already completed their vaccination.

As to the vaccination of senior citizens in Central Visayas, the government has already inoculated 32,765 elderly and still has to vaccinate 571,679 more.

On Saturday, May 22, the DOH announced that close to 7,000 more new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases have been reported in the country, while over 180 more Covid-19 patients had died.

The health department said 6,831 new infections were reported and this does not include those from three laboratories that were not able to submit their data to the Covid-19 Document Repository System on May 20.

The new infections brought the cumulative count to 1,178,217.

Of the confirmed cases, the DOH said 183 more patients have succumbed to Covid-19, bringing to 19,946 the total number of deaths.

The case fatality rate stood at 1.69 percent.

The DOH also reported 7,981 Covid-19 recoveries.

As of May 22, a total of 1,103,945 or 93.7 percent of the Covid-19 patients have already recovered.

The country’s active cases remained at 54,326. This accounts for 4.6 percent of the coronavirus infections in the country, said the DOH.

Of the active cases, 93.6 percent are mild cases, 1.9 percent are asymptomatic, 1.9 percent are severe cases, 1.4 percent are critical, and 1.2 percent are considered moderate. (WBS / HDT / SunStar Philippines)