Newly-vaccinated Tacloban health workers contract COVID-19

MANILA – Recent COVID-19 infections in Tacloban City were mostly on health workers, some of whom were already fully vaccinated against the virus, the city mayor said yesterday.

“What we also noticed, kaya nag-spread ito ng mabilis dahil last week, immediately, ang mga nahahawahaan dito more than 100 health care workers, frontliners,” Tacloban City Mayor Alfred Romualdez said on ABSCBN’s TeleRadyo.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said building immunity against COVID-19 “typically takes a few weeks.”

Johns Hopkins, America’s premiere research university said COVID-19 vaccines do not totally block the virus but definitely “prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death.”

Romualdez urged those who got vaccinated against COVID-19, most especially health frontliners, to rest and stay in their homes for at least a week, so they would not catch the virus.

He also added that majority who got infected were asymptomatic of the respiratory disease, and their cases were not fatal.

“’Pag nag-second dose ka at may side effect, you have to rest for at least one week, because paglabas nila doon, natatamaan sila,” he said.

“Kaya ang nangyari dito nagulat kami, 99 percent of the health workers nabakunahan na, in fact, ‘yung mga nag-positive, nabakunahan, in fact dalawang dosage pa nga eh. Tapos na,” he explained.

Aside from this, he also blamed the rise of infections there due to the location of the city, which is surrounded by several provinces in Eastern Visayas, and the lack of medical facilities.

Some of the region’s major hospitals, he pointed out, are in Tacloban City.

Despite this, cases in the city are on a downtrend.

Tacloban is under modified enhanced community quarantine until the end of June.