- MITCH M. LIPA
The City of Bacolod will receive its share of 6,270 doses of China’s Sinovac vaccines for medical frontliners with the arrival of the supply from Manila at around 9 a.m. today.
The vaccines will be brought to the cold storage facility at the Bacolod Government Center, where a ceremonial vaccination will be held at 10 a.m.
City Administrator Em Ang, executive director of the Emergency Operations Center, said the vaccines intended for personnel of Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital will be turned over to the CLMMRH cooling facility while those allotted for healthcare workers of Dr. Pablo O. Torre Memorial Hospital (Riverside Medical Center) will stay at the city’s cooling facility.
The vaccination for the first group medical frontliners will start on Sunday.
The 6,270 vaccines allocated by the Department of Health to Bacolod is good for 3,135 medical front-liners who will receive two doses each.
Some 1,642 healthcare workers of CLMMRH will receive the vaccine while remaining 1,493 are those from DPOTMH.
Dr. Edwin Miraflor, officer-in-charge of City Health Office, said the group represents only 25 percent of the more than 12,000 medical frontliners in Bacolod.
The next group will be the medical frontliners from Level 2 hospitals such as The Doctors’ Hospital and Bacolod Adventist Medical Center but their schedule was not determined yet.
The DOH-6 has identified 8,438 medical frontliners in six Western Visayas hospitals up for vaccination under the first batch.
The four hospitals in Iloilo City are Western Visayas Medical Center with 2,224 frontliners; St. Paul Hospital, 1,500; West Visayas State University Medical Center, 1,153; and Iloilo Doctors’ Hospital, 426.
Dr. Julius Drilon, medical center chief of CLMMRH, said they have not yet received a formal communication from DOH-6 as to how the vaccination procedure will be done.
The hospital will have its vaccinators and they are preparing for it, he said.
Drilon said that out of 1,743 hospital staff, only 900 employees have agreed to receive the vaccine from China.
Of the number, he needs to segregate those who are below 60 years old since the vaccine is not advised for senior citizens.
More than 500,000 doses of Sinovac donated by the government of China to the Philippines arrived last Sunday.
Vaccination rollout for Metro Manila medical frontliners has already started. – MML
