Cebu City gets 27K doses of AZ, resumes vaccination on Monday

THE wait is over.

Cebu City has gotten additional Covid-19 vaccine allocations from the Department of Health Central Visayas (DOH 7).

Cebu City Health Department (CHD) officer-in-charge Jeffrey Ibones said 27,000 doses of AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccines were delivered to the CHD on Thursday, May 13, 2021.

The City also received an allocation for 5,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine that are now being kept in the DOH storage facility.

With the newly delivered AZ vaccines, the City will resume first-dose vaccinations on Monday, May 17. Ibones said the City will also accommodate second dose recipients.

As for the Pfizer vaccines, Ibones said they still have no details on when the inoculations will start since this is a new and “delicate” brand to be used by the City.

Inoculation for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be done only at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC).

During the first week of May, the DOH 7 delivered more than 9,000 Sinovac vaccines to Cebu City which were all used up in just a week.

The Cebu City Vaccine Operations Center (VOC) called on people to register online, instead of just walking into the city’s vaccination sites.

Cebu City has three vaccination sites: Robinsons Galleria, University of Cebu (UC) Banilad Senior High School Department, and SM Seaside City Cebu.

Ibones said those who will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be randomly picked from the list of pre-registered individuals.

15 sites

As more vaccines arrive, the City targets to open a total of 15 vaccination sites in the coming days to cater to more individuals, said Councilor David Tumulak, one of the VOC cluster heads.

Vice Mayor Michael Rama, lead convener of the Vaccine Advisory Board, said the City will open two vaccination sites in mountain barangays.

Ibones said the sites will require more manpower and will open only on weekends.

Since the Local Finance Committee plans to allocate P400 million for the city’s vaccination program, Ibones said part of the funds may be used to hire more doctors and nurses. The City needs at least eight doctors for each vaccination site.

As of May 12, Cebu City has given first doses to a total of 20,041 individuals under the Priority Codes A1 (workers in frontline health services), A2 (senior citizens) and A3 (persons with comorbidities).

This is broken down as follows: 10,202 (senior citizens) 5,344 (health care workers), 3,036 (persons with comorbidities), and 1,459 (individuals who belong to these priority sectors but failed to specify which sector they belonged to upon registration).

A total of 2,009 individuals have been given their second dose of the vaccine.

Some 105,716 have registered for Cebu City’s vaccination program as of May 13.

In Central Visayas, the DOH 7 said a total of 1,878 senior citizens have been inoculated as of May 12.

Of this number, only 422 or 22.5 percent received the Sinovac vaccine while the remaining 1,456 were vaccinated with the AZ vaccine.

The DOH 7 said among the most common adverse events experienced by individuals who received the Sinovac vaccine were elevated blood pressure, vaccination site pain, and headache.

Those vaccinated with AZ vaccines usually had fever, headache and body malaise.

The DOH has been monitoring adverse effects following inoculation (AEFI) or untoward medical occurence that follows Covid-19 vaccination, which may not necessarily have a causal relationship with the use of the vaccine.