KALIBO, Aklan – The province of Aklan still has a long way to go to achieve herd immunity against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
So far, 23,134 Aklanons have been fully vaccinated (with two doses or with the single-shot Janssen v accine) while 36,955 individuals have received one vaccine shot (either Sinovac, AstraZeneca or Gamaleya), according to the Regional Vaccination Operations Center as of July 24.
Aklan needs to vaccine 70 percent of its over 600,000 population to reach herd immunity (enough people become immune to the virus, making the spread from person to person unlikely).
With several variants of the virus causing COVID-19 circulating, health experts now calculate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent.
Gov. Florencio Miraflores urged local government units to establish more vaccination sites. He expects a steady supply of vaccines this August.
Aklan is deemed at high-risk by the Department of Health; its seven-day average positivity test rate is rolling at 44 percent, with 1,072 new cases the past week.
Aklan had a total of 7,487 confirmed cases with 168 deaths since the pandemic began. As of July 26, hospitals were treating 113 COVID-19 patients as compared to 69 patients one month ago.
To date, DOH had allocated 103,652 COVID-19 vaccines to Aklan or 7.27 percent of 1,425,650 vaccine allocations in Western Visayas.
About 22.55 percent or 321,482 doses were deployed to Iloilo; 298,960 doses (20.97%) to Negros Occidental; and 264,924 doses (18.58%) to Iloilo City.
Bacolod City received 184,040 doses (12.91%); Capiz with 118,708 doses (8.33%); Antique with 93,510 doses (6.56%); and Guimaras with 31,854 doses (2.23%)./PN
