City eyes village-based COVID jabs this week

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The Iloilo City government will expand vaccination coverage by bringing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) inoculation activities to the barangays.

In an interview with Bombo Radyo Iloilo, Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas said that the city’s COVID-19 vaccination process has improved lately.

He cited several measures they implemented such as the designation of barangay captains as “vaccination center managers” in its five current sites and clearer assignments for personnel stationed at these sites.

“It has been better. We have placed vaccination center managers, our barangay captains. For medical, they will evaluate, they will do jobs, and post-evaluation. We have established each person’s responsibilities so we are faster now. But of course, there will always be some kinks. Sometimes, it will rain, and the process becomes slower. But we try to do our best.”

Treñas said they will start piloting COVID-19 vaccination in barangays on Friday at Barangay Calumpang in Molo, in addition to the current vaccination centers.

COVID-19 vaccinations are being conducted at the Central Philippine University (Jaro), Iloilo Convention Center (Mandurriao), University of San Agustin (City Proper), Ateneo De Iloilo (Mandurriao), and University of the Philippines Visayas (City Proper).

He said that the new vaccination activity is aimed to make COVID-19 vaccinations easier and more accessible to senior citizens and persons with disabilities or co-morbidities in the barangay levels.

Senior citizens and persons with co-morbidities belong to priority groups A2 and A3 of the Department of Health’s (DOH) vaccine prioritization scheme.

Should there be less seniors and persons with disabilities or co-morbidities at the barangay, vaccines would be given to other residents in other priority groups.

The mayor instructed persons in charge of the city’s COVID-19 vaccination program to use all vaccines to “lessen the burden on their inventory”.

He added that they are also still looking into issues in village rollouts, especially internet connection, as they need to report the progress in vaccination activities to the DOH.

Treñas said they still have enough time to look at the issues before they conduct the pilot-testing.

“It’s still on Friday, so we will have time to look at it, because at the end of this, while we go on with the large vaccination centers, so it can be faster, and our resources wouldn’t dissipate, eventually we would enter the barangays because it would be easier our elderly in the barangays. They could just take the sikad to their gym, or their children can take them.”

 

MORE VACCINES

Treñas also said that the city is wasting no time to use up all the 50,800 Coronavac vaccines currently stored at the Jubilee Hall.

The mayor had a meeting with DOH and PhilHealth on Monday, together with the governors of the provinces in Western Visayas and the city administrator of Bacolod representing Mayor Evelio Leonardia.

Local leaders were advised to exhaust up to 30,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to ensure additional deliveries.

The city is also expected to receive more doses being of the ‘NCR Plus 8 Plus 10’ priority areas of the national government in increased vaccine delivery.

Treñas said that if the city does run out of vaccines for the first doses, they can expect even more vaccines to be delivered.

He said that he will be meeting with the city’s COVID-19 Task Force to stretch out the vaccination to reach this target.

“We were going slow because what was initially told of us was that we can only use 50 percent. I hope that within four days, we could use 50 percent. Today, if we wish to go to 30,000, we will be meeting again so we can catch up to the 30,000,” said the mayor.

He also discussed with Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. the possibility of donating excess vaccines if doses from the national government and the stocks procured by the city are delivered.

“I have talked to Governor Toto yesterday, and we have said that we have continued to vaccinate and deliveries are continuing and we also have procured vaccines. If we have little excess, then we will sit down and talk about where these vaccines will go, because it’s important that we LGUs help each other,” he said.

Iloilo City procured 600,000 doses of AZD122 COVID-19 vaccines from British drugmaker AstraZeneca and 70,000 doses of NVX-CoV2373 from American biotech firm Novavax. It is also finalizing negotiations with India’s Bharat Biotech to procure 50,000 doses of Covaxin.