Negros Oriental Assistant Provincial Health Officer Dr. Liland Estacion. (PNA file photo)
DUMAGUETE CITY – Negros Oriental Gov. Roel Degamo requested Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., National Task Force against Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) chief implementer and vaccine czar, for more doses of vaccines for Negros Oriental as the province continues to suffer from a surge in cases.
Assistant Provincial Health Officer Dr. Liland Estacion, Covid-19 incident commander of the province’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID), said in a virtual press briefing Tuesday the governor is waiting for Galvez’s response.
Estacion, however, could not give other details as to how many doses of vaccine Degamo has asked from the NTF.
The request was made after President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night placed Negros Oriental under the stricter modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) due to the spike in cases over the past several weeks, making the province and its capital, Dumaguete City the "epicenter" of infections in Region 7.
Duterte also announced that he wanted to have more vaccines deployed to areas in the country that are now having the most Covid-19 cases.
Negros Oriental is lagging behind other areas in the inoculation rollout due to slower administration of vaccines in the local government units (LGUs), Estacion said.
She said the replenishment of vaccines is dependent on the province’s consumption rate and the province only has about 85 percent.
But with the increasing number of cases, Estacion hoped there would be a bigger allocation for Negros Oriental.
She said Negros Oriental has so far received 41,124 doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines.
As of June 15, she said 23,130 people have received the first dose and 11,803 for the second dose of Sinovac while 4,242 have been inoculated with AstraZeneca.
Meanwhile, Estacion reported four more Covid-19 mortalities, 290 new recoveries, and 699 new positive cases, covering four days from June 11-14.
The total caseload of Negros Oriental since the start of the pandemic is 6,776, broken down into 4,419 recoveries, 2,242 active positive infections, and 115 deaths. (PNA)
