BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – This city and Negros Occidental received additional vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) yesterday.
At the Bacolod-Silay Airport, 7,200 China-made CoronaVac vaccines arrived via a Cebu Pacific cargo flight; 5,200 of these were immediately turned over to the Negros Occidental provincial government while the 2,000 were delivered to the city government of Bacolod.
The shipment was part of the one million doses of CoronaVac procured by the national government, said Dr. Chris Sorongon, deputy for medical data and analysis of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) here.
The new delivery will be for another 1,000 city healthcare workers.
Meanwhile, Dr. Ernell Tumimbang, head of Provincial Health Office, said of the 5,200 doses they received, 2,600 will be for health workers in the province yet to be vaccinated, while the 2,600 will be for the second doses of those who got vaccinated first.
Tumimbang also said they could only allot vaccines to individuals under the A1 category.
They have yet to move to Category A2 because supplies are limited, he explained.
“As much as we would like nga makapana-og na ‘ta sa other priorities, we could not,” Tumimbang said.
Based on the guidelines set by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, healthcare workers in both national and local, and private and public facilities are included in Priority Group A1.
Senior citizens are listed under Priority Group A2, while persons with comorbidities are under Priority Group A3.
There are currently a total of 31,000 healthcare workers in Negros Occidental./PN
