Nearly all medical frontliners in Dagupan get jabs vs COVID-19

The Dagupan City Astrodome serves as a non-hospital-based vaccination site. On Monday (April 26), Mayor Brian Lim announced that 6,996 (or 94.5 percent) out of the 7,399 medical frontliners in the city had been vaccinated against COVID-19. Photo by Willie Lomibao

DAGUPAN CITY –– Almost 100 percent of the medical frontliners in this city had been inoculated against COVID-19, data from the city health office (CHO) showed.

A total of 6,996 (or 94.5 percent) of the 7,399 medical frontliners had received the first dose, the CHO said. A total of 2,374 had their second dose.

Mayor Brian Lim said a few health workers were still waiting for other vaccine brands, while others were hesitant about getting vaccinated.

“We can’t really have a 100-percent vaccination rate because of different reasons,” Lim said in a phone interview Monday, April 26.

The mayor said the city government had received 1,500 more doses of Coronavac, made by Chinese firm Sinovac Biotech, which would be for the second dose of the medical frontliners.

He said the city had started inoculating senior citizens, with 1,648 having received the first dose.

Dagupan has the highest vaccination rate of medical frontliners among the local governments in Ilocos Region, followed by Pangasinan, which has 62 percent of 20,496, La Union (56 percent out of 14,106), Ilocos Sur (40 percent out of 21,812), and Ilocos Norte (40 percent of 15,509).

Lim said the city government could not move to the other sectors for the vaccination program because of the scarcity of vaccines.

“The national government is prioritizing the areas where the COVID-19 cases are high, as the National Capital Region, for the vaccination,” he said.

LZB