Iloilo confident in reaching COVID immunity targets

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

The Iloilo provincial government hopes to speed up its vaccination rollout and reach its herd immunity target against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) soon after securing assurance from national and regional authorities of regular vaccine deliveries every two weeks.

Iloilo Provincial Administrator Suzette Mamon told Aksyon Radyo Iloilo on Sunday that the province has so far administered the first dose of COVID-19 vaccines to 89,074 individuals in the province, with 31,718 of them already receiving their second dose.

Mamon said 81 percent of health care workers master-listed under vaccination priority group A1 have received their first dose, and 65 percent have received their second dose, but she did not provide full figures.

These vaccination figures are still far from the herd immunity target of 1.448 million residents, or 70 percent of the province’s projected population of about 2 million.

Mamon said that the administration of COVID-19 vaccines was in line with the Department of Health’s (DOH) prioritization scheme.

The DOH guideline is also the basis for vaccine allocation of every municipality and city.

Currently in Western Visayas, only priority groups A1 (health care facility workers), A2 (senior citizens), and A3 (persons with co-morbidities) are allowed to be vaccinated.

But according to DOH data, persons under groups A4 (frontline personnel in essential sectors) and A5 (indigent residents) have been vaccinated in the region.

“We base this on the eligible priority groups, the master list, and the population. It is divided equitably between our towns, so we can download for our health workers, senior citizens, those with co-morbidities, those are who we are prioritizing,” Mamon said.

Mamon announced that based on their meeting with officials from the Philippine office of British drugmaker AstraZeneca and the National Task Force Against COVID-19, the vaccines they have procured will arrive between July and the first week of August.

Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. on January signed a tripartite agreement with AstraZeneca and the DOH to procure 270,000 doses of the AZD1222 vaccine.

Last week, the province also received 27,000 doses of Coronavac made by Chinese biotech firm Sinovac, and 5,000 doses of BnT162b2 made by German biotech firm BioNTech and distributed by American drugmaker Pfizer.

Mamon said the DOH and the Regional Inter-Agency Task Force committed that the province would regularly receive vaccines every two weeks.

She said that if the vaccines would continue to pour in, the province may reach its herd immunity target sooner than expected.

They are also continuing to campaign for more people to register for vaccination to address vaccine hesitancy which she said was the most pervasive challenge in their efforts.

“If [the vaccines] continue coming in, we can definitely reach that. Our numbers will also be increasing so we can speed up. Also including those from AstraZeneca for the province, I hope they can fully deliver the 270,000 doses which we procured,” she said.

As to the 167 vaccine doses wasted in San Enrique last week, Mamon said that the Provincial Health Office has already investigated and submitted a report to the DOH.

Recommendations were also made to the municipal health officers to avoid future instances, although she declined to enumerate them.

“There were measures recommended not only for San Enrique, but also Municipal Health Offices in each town on how we can avoid these situations. But then, it was a mechanical defect, not out of negligence, but a fluctuation of electric power and defect in the volt regulator, which is beyond the control of the municipality of San Enrique,” Mamon said.