THE city is planning to make vaccination a daily thing, what with Pfizer creating kilometer-long queues last week.
The city insists that the city still has limited COVID-19 vaccines. Nevertheless, it is working on extending vaccinations until the weekends.
City Health Services Officer Dr. Rowena Galpo said that they will open at least two sites to accommodate weekend vaccinees.
Galpo said that the recently opened Baguio Country Club vaccination site will open Sunday and Monday while the Pines City Doctors Hospital is also negotiating for a Sunday vaccination schedule.
With these developments, Galpo said they are working out a Saturday schedule to achieve a daily vaccination system in Baguio.
“The available supply of vaccines will be distributed to all the vaccination sites to avoid long lines and hasten the vaccination roll-out,” Galpo said.
Currently, the city operates the University of Baguio gymnasium, St. Vincent Gym, and SM basement parking from Tuesday to Friday ,depending on the availability of vaccines.
As of June 15, Baguio City has already inoculated a total of 62,145 first and second doses using the available vaccines Sinovac, Aztrazeneca and Gamaleya for priority sectors A1 – health workers, A2 senior citizens and A3 – persons with comorbidities.
Based on the data from the online vaccination portal bakuna.baguio.gov.ph, Baguio City has registered 79,201 target population to be vaccinated for categories A1, A2 and A3 as of June 15.
Insas said the city is ready to implement vaccination of priority A4 covering essential workers once the national government, through the Department of Health, gives its go signal.
“Please understand that due to a limited supply of vaccines, we need to follow the priority list of vaccinees. Please be patient, your time will come to receive the vaccine and while waiting, do register at our website bakuna.baguio.gov.ph because this is our baseline data for vaccine allocation,” Insas explained.
About 35,100 doses of Pfizer vaccines, still part of the country’s COVAX grant, were received by the CHSO representatives Ms. Faith Kiat-ong, Pharmacist III and Sonia Insas, Nurse V last June 15.
The vaccines were delivered from DOH Central Office to the CHSO and inspected by FDA-CAR representative Nadia Navarro, FDRO.
The CHSO did not announce that they will be dispensing Pfizer last Tuesday but soon dispatched them when the vaccines arrived.
The word, however, got out and more and more residents were able to avail of the US-based vaccine.
The next day and until Friday, the lines at the vaccine sites were considerably longer.
DOH–CAR Regional Director and RVOC chairperson Dr. Ruby Constantino said COVID – 19 remains a public health concern regardless of age, race and ethnicity. The risk of severe illness, complications and death from COVID – 19 increases with age.
Constantino said senior citizens are considered most vulnerable to getting infected, thus in the enforcement of community quarantine, they are advised to remain at home at all times. Due also to this vulnerability, senior citizens are next in priority for vaccination after workers in frontline health services.
“We are appealing to all our partners at all levels to assist the government in this endeavor, and to all 60 years old and above constituents to take this opportunity to be vaccinated,” Constantino said.
As of June 14, 2021, DOH–CAR data shows that COVID-19 deaths among ages 60 – 69 already reached 190 or 27 percent, and 282 among 70 years old and above which account for 40.5% of the recorded deaths in Cordillera.
Based on the Cordillera RVOC June 17 data, there are 144,446 master listed senior citizens in the region, of which 37,357 or 25.86 percent already got their first dose of COVID–19 vaccines including 9,562 who have already completed their two doses of vaccines.
Nationwide, the National Vaccination Operations Center data show around 1.89 million or 23.18 percent out of the 8,173,223 master listed senior citizens in the country already received their first dose of COVID–19 vaccines as of June 17. – Jessa Samidan with reports from Frank Cimatu
