17 elderly Tarlac residents, 8 others die of COVID-19

Tarlac City residents wait for their turn to be vaccinated against COVID-19 inside the Tarlac State University’s gymnasium. (Photo from the Tarlac City information office)

MABALACAT CITY, Pampanga — Seventeen senior citizens were among the 25 latest COVID-19 fatalities in Tarlac, data from the provincial government showed.

The Tarlac COVID-19 Task Force’s latest bulletin on Oct. 10 and 11 showed the youngest among the elderly residents who died from the disease was a 60-year-old man from La Paz, while the oldest was a 97-year-old woman from the same town.

The province recorded 89 new cases and 200 recoveries. Its active cases stood at 973.

It has registered a total of 16,925 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began last year. Of these, 15,292 have recovered, while 660 have died.

Data showed that some 499,173 or 47.4 percent of the province’s 1,052,419 target population have been vaccinated against COVID-19 as of October 8.

Of these, at least 311,427 comprising 29.6 percent of the eligible residents have been fully inoculated while 240,772 or 22.9 percent of the target have received the first dose of the vaccine and are still waiting for their second dose.

Tarlac has a total population of around 1,503,456 based on the 2020 census. The provincial government intends to inoculate around 70 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus disease.