Baguio brings vaccine to bedridden residents

HOME VACCINATION A member of a medical team in Baguio City monitors a bedridden patient for possible side effects after the latter received a COVID-19 vaccine shot. —BAGUIO CITY HEALTH SERVICES OFFICEPHOTO

BAGUIO CITY — The city health services office (CHSO) here has deployed a COVID-19 Mobile Vaccination (MoVacc) for residents who could not go to the jab sites due to their health conditions.

A MoVacc team on an ambulance has started to go to the homes of bedridden and “nonambulatory” residents on Thursday so they could receive the vaccine.

The team is composed of at least six medical workers, including doctors and nurses who would screen and monitor the patients.

“[We] are targeting to vaccinate the most vulnerable population that is incapable of going to the vaccination sites and the MoVacc team goes to them to be vaccinated instead,” said Dr. Khecy Colas, one of the team’s screeners.

Limited number

Relatives were asked to register the patients at their respective barangay health office, after which the CHSO would assess and schedule the inoculation.

At least 21 patients, mostly elderly, from Aurora Hill District Health Center have so far benefited from the mobile vaccine team, receiving their first dose of CoronaVac, the vaccine manufactured by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd.

According to CHSO nurse Sonia Insas, the roving team could only vaccinate a limited number of patients in a day since the recipients must be observed between 30-60 minutes for possible adverse side effects.She said the team had been strictly enforcing health precautionary measures to ensure that the patients and their family members would be safe from infections.

As of May 26, only 12,000 or 40 percent of the targeted 30,000 seniors in the city have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Rollout in Pampanga

In Pampanga province, only 21 percent or 8,497 of the more than 40,000 elderly residents in the capital city of San Fernando have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, data from the city information office showed.

As of Friday, some 1,605 elderly residents in San Fernando received full vaccination, comprising only 4 percent of the senior citizens targeted for inoculation in the city.

Dr. Carlos Mercado, city health officer, said all of the 10,814 first doses of Sinovac the city received from the Department of Health (DOH) had been administered to health workers and elderly residents.

He said the 9, 912 first doses of AstraZeneca arrived only last week and part of it was being administered to some 1,300 elderly on Friday.

This city also received 5,774 second-dose of Sinovac and 1,128 second-dose of AstraZeneca from the DOH, of which 3,291 of both were administered to health workers and senior residents.

— KIMBERLIE QUITASOL AND JUN MALIG