- MITCH M. LIPA
Only 900 out of the 1,743 employees of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital in Bacolod City are willing to be inoculated with the China-made Sinovac vaccine, chief of hospital, Dr. Julius Drilon, revealed.
Drilon said that of the total number, the hospital also needs to segregate those who are above 60-years-old and the staff with co-morbidities, who are actually not qualified for the Sinovac vaccine.
They have scheduled the start of vaccination of frontliners on Tuesday but the “ceremony” will be held at 9:30 a.m. today at the Reodica Hall to be witnessed by members of the media.
The Department of Health gave the CLMMRH a vaccine allocation good for 1,642 medical personnel.
The Riverside Medical Center Inc. will also hold its ceremonial COVID-19 vaccination at the FHM conference room.
RMC has an allocation for its 1,493 medical frontliners.
A total of 6,270 doses of Sinovac vaccines, good for the 3,135 frontliners of both DOH-6 COVID-19 referral hospitals arrived last Friday in Bacolod City.
The vaccination procedure for the two hospitals should be finished in four to five days as scheduled by the DOH-6, according to the Bacolod City Emergency Operations Center.
Executive Director and concurrent City Administrator Em Ang said since the CLMMRH has a lower number of medical frontliners who are willing to receive the vaccines, then the excess will be assigned to the frontliners of Level 2 hospitals.
These are the Bacolod Adventist Medical Center and The Doctors’ Hospital, she said.
The EOC, Ang said, has the list of medical frontliners of every hospital for prioritization.
The DOH-6 has identified 8,438 medical frontliners for six Western Visayas hospitals up for vaccination for the first batch.
The four other hospitals in Iloilo are the Western Visayas Medical Center with 2,224 frontliners, St. Paul Hospital, 1,500; Western Visayas State University Medical Center, 1,153, and Iloilo Doctors Hospital, 426, DOH-6 said.
Five doctors and a nurse were the first recipients of the vaccines during the ceremonial rollout held Friday at the lobby of the Bacolod Government Center.
The event was witnessed by city officials headed by Mayor Evelio Leonardia.
Leonardia admitted there were city councilors that he had originally included in the list to be vaccinated because of their willingness, but vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez advised him that the first batch of vaccines is solely for medical frontliners. – MML
