ILOILO City – More vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be delivered to Western Visayas today via the Iloilo International Airport.
This second batch of vaccines consist of 16,880 doses from Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech and 10,000 shots from British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca donated to the Philippine government.
Dr. Jane Juanico, chief of the Infectious Disease Section of the Department of Health (DOH) Region 6, said the 16,880 additional Sinovac doses would be used as second dose for those health workers given their initial jabs.
The second dose of Sinovac vaccine must be given 28 days after the first inoculation.
“Ang incoming naton nga additional doses will be dedicated gihapon sa aton mga healthcare workers sa mga hospitals. Moving from level 3 (hospitals), nagakadto na kita sa level 2, level 1 and even sa aton infirmary and quarantine and isolation facilities,” said Juanico.
Level 1 hospitals are those with minimum healthcare services; Level 2 are hospitals that offer extra facilities like intensive care unit and specialist doctors; and Level 3 hospitals have training programs for doctors, rehabilitation, dialysis units, among others.
As of March 8, around 660 medical frontliners from six referral hospitals in the cities of Iloilo and Bacolod have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, based on the DOH-6 assessment, the vaccine uptake among healthcare workers in the region picked up from 20 percent to 50 percent.
The biggest factor in the increase, according to Juanico, is the modeling of the department heads, specialists and top level management who were injected first.
“Naka-encourage gid sang daku sa ila mga empleyado and other healthcare workers within the facility nga magpabakuna,” Juanico stressed.
Aside from this, the conduct of education campaign on COVID-19 vaccines, which were joined by medical experts, helped a lot to encourage them./PN
