8 get jabs as Baguio launches Sinovac rollout in Cordillera

FIRST JAB. Dr. Ricardo Ruñez, medical director of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, is the first official beneficiary of the vaccine produced by Chinese pharmaceutical Sinovac for Baguio and the Cordillera during the vaccination rollout on March 5. PHOTO BY EV ESPIRITU

BAGUIO CITY –– Eight Baguio residents, most of them employees of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, were given the first injections of CoronaVac on Friday, as Baguio launched the vaccine rollout for the Cordillera.

Dr. Ricardo Ruñez, BGHMC medical director, is the region’s first official beneficiary of the vaccine developed by Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

BGHMC has been the primary facility handling coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients since the public health crisis was declared last year.

Ruñez said vaccinating the medical staff and all its employees would ensure they would keep serving patients.

Also taking their jabs were BGHMC chief of professional staff Dr. Ray Suanding, the hospital’s chief infectious disease expert Dr. Thea Pamela Cajulao, and chief nurse Jose Datud.

The hospital’s rank-and-file was represented at the vaccination program by Cyrene Romero, who is tasked with cleaning hospital waste, ambulance driver and COVID-19 survivor Fernan Tong-an, and Edward Sipudlao, the hospital’s financial management officer.

Baguio lawyer Patrick Henry Villanueva was also vaccinated.

Runez said the vaccines “are the best way to conquer this virus,” and would help ease the city back into normalcy.

The Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center staged the first vaccination rollout of the Chinese vaccine Coronavac on March 5, which will be launched in hospitals across the Cordillera this weekend. PHOTO BY EV ESPIRITU

The BGHMC medical staff was originally slated to receive 7,220 Sinovac allocations along with four other Cordillera hospitals for a simultaneous vaccination launch on Mar. 7.

The allocations were intended as the first and the mandatory second doses for 3,608 Cordillera health frontliners.

But the Cordillera office of the Department of Health received instructions on Thursday, Mar. 4, to convert these Sinovac allocations into first doses for 8,828 medical and health workers throughout the region’s public and private hospitals, and infirmaries, said Dr. Ruby Constantino, the region’s DOH director.

Vaccines produced by British pharmaceutical AstraZeneca have also arrived in the country through the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) program but Constantino said she was still awaiting guidelines for an AstraZeneca rollout in the mountain region.

LZB