GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 17 Aug) – The city government has increased its weekly vaccination target against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) to 30,000 individuals to further move ahead with its goal to achieve population protection before the end of the year.
City Mayor Ronnel Rivera said on Tuesday they are continually expanding their vaccination capacity to meet their aspired daily inoculation coverage of 5,000 eligible residents from the city’s 26 barangays.
“We’re on track to achieve our targets so far and hopefully we can sustain this to realize our plans,” he said in a radio interview.
The mayor earlier said they are working towards achieving 70 percent population protection level by October or November to ease the current restrictions and allow the area’s situation to normalize.
The city is currently under Alert Level 4 due to the continuing increase of community transmitted cases and the threats posed by the spread of the COVID-19 new variants, especially the dreaded Delta strain.
As of Monday night, the city has the highest active COVID-19 cases in Region 12 (Soccsksargen) with 813, including 62 newly confirmed infections.
The cumulative cases in the area since last year have reached a total of 8,808, with 284 related deaths and 7,711 recoveries.
Rivera acknowledged that the local transmission of the disease has remained a big problem for the city but assured that they are exerting all efforts to contain it.
He said part of their strategy is the aggressive vaccination of residents, especially those under the top priority groups.
The inoculation activities in the area are presently focused on the priority groups A2 (senior citizens), A3 (persons with comorbidities), and A4 (essential private and government workers).
A report released by the City Health Office (CHO) on Monday showed that a total of 105,759 doses of COVID-19 vaccines were already administered in the area as of Aug. 13.
A total of 40,691 individuals were listed as fully vaccinated while 65,068 have already received the first dose of the vaccines and waiting for their second shots.
The deployed vaccines, mostly provided by the national government, comprised AstraZeneca, Sinovac’s CoronaVac, Russia’s Sputnik V, and Moderna.
CHO said that among those administered in the city so far were 3,042 doses of CoronaVac and 1,750 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines purchased by the private sector.
On Tuesday morning, the city government received a donation of 2,500 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from the MVP Group of Companies, through the PLDT-Smart Foundation, and in coordination with Zuellig Pharma Corporation and the St. Elizabeth Hospital here.
Rivera said the vaccines will be utilized for the inoculation of essential workers, senior citizens, and those working in the most vulnerable sectors. (MindaNews)
