Pasay gets more Coronavac doses as virus cases spike

MANILA, Philippines — Fighting a spike in COVID-19 cases, the Pasay City local government has placed 210 households in 77 barangays on lockdown for two weeks.

All of Barangay 183 was placed on lockdown on Tuesday, after the village logged 34 cases, the highest in the city.

As of Tuesday, Pasay City has 8,203 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 519 of them active. Of these active cases, 61 are new.

Mayor Emi Calixto Rubiano on Tuesday said the national government would give Pasay 5,000 more doses of the Sinovac Biotech vaccine to help the city fight the rise in COVID-19 cases.

Pasay City General Hospital received 300 doses of CoronaVac on Monday as the government launched its COVID-19 vaccination drive.

Interior Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said on Tuesday that the Department of Health (DOH) would deliver the additional doses of the vaccine to Pasay City “in the next few days.”

The Pasay cases included three with the more transmissible South Africa variant of the coronavirus.

Infected at work

Rubiano said two of the cases recovered on Sunday and Monday. She said the first “recovered long ago.”

All three, however, will be retested for the virus on the advice of the DOH, she said.

Rubiano did not disclose the barangays where the three cases lived.

One of the patients, she said, is a merchant mariner.

“They got the virus from their workplaces,” she said.

Rubiano said health authorities were investigating another “potential” case of the South Africa variant.

“The DOH [is] still tracing where this patient really resides,” she said.