DOH to do house-to-house vaccination of seniors in Central Visayas

Central Visayas (Google Maps)

CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines — A house-to-house inoculation drive will be conducted in Central Visayas by healthcare workers from the Department of Health (DOH) and the local governments in an effort to increase the number of senior citizens who need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus disease.

Dr. Jaime Bernadas, the DOH director in the region, said many seniors refused to get vaccinated for fear of its side effects based on false information they received.

As of March 17, the number of vaccinated senior citizens in the region has reached 337,494, or 52.96 percent of the target population of 637,277.

Bernadas said the DOH would help the local governments reach at least 70 percent of their target populations.

On Saturday, the National Vaccination Operations Center announced they were planning for more granular COVID-19 vaccination drives in areas with slow vaccination turnout.

Based on the March 18 data of the Visayan Vaccination Operations Center, Negros Oriental had a 48.01-percent vaccination rate while Cebu province had fully vaccinated 53.46 percent of its population.

Bohol, on the other hand, had a vaccination rate of 61.41 percent while Siquijor province had exceeded the 80 percent target, with 85.46 percent of its target populace now inoculated.

Among the Central Visayas local governments, only Siquijor and Cebu City are under alert level 1 until the end of March.

The provinces of Cebu, Bohol and Negros Oriental, and the highly urbanized cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu are still under alert level 2.

—NESTLE SEMILLA 

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