CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – The City Health Office (CHO) announced that the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) has lauded the city for its coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccination output.
In an online briefer Thursday, CHO medical officer Dr. Ted Yu Jr. said the NVOC, through Secretary Vivencio Dizon congratulated the city for being the only local government unit (LGU) in Northern Mindanao (Region 10) that achieved over 80 percent of its vaccination rate.
"Earlier, the National Vaccination Operations Center in Manila, through Sec. Dizon congratulated us as we are the only one (LGU) in Region 10 that achieves over 80 percent (vaccination rate). Again, we would like to thank our vaccination team for that," Yu said.
As of February 23, the CHO data showed the city tallied 531,789 fully vaccinated individuals, or 88.64 percent of the total target population of 599,929.
Of the fully vaccinated, 97,696 individuals have received their booster shots and 24,567 individuals have received their first dose.
The city government also recorded 6,098 children aged five to 11 years old who have received their first dose of vaccine, after the city's Covid-19 vaccination team inoculated 541 children yesterday, February 23.
"Even with this number 92.73 percent (total first dose) we still have reported deaths who are unvaccinated so this is very critical to our people. Hopefully, all of us will get vaccinated," Yu said.
According to the CHO's data, there is around 7 percent of the target population that are not yet vaccinated.
New batch of Omicron cases
The CHO also reported the third batch of Omicron variant cases detected in the city.
Yu said the new batch is composed of five Omicron cases - two males and three females, of whom four are local cases and one re-tagged case.
The one re-tagged case is a non-city resident who is an authorized person outside of residence (APOR) while the four local cases are residents from the villages of Pagatpat, Patag, Bonbon, and Dansolihon.
Yu said the specimen samples from the five cases were collected last January 18-24 this year. The results were released by the Philippine Genome Center on February 21 and the CHO received the results on February 23.
To date, he said they have recorded 14 closed contacts from the new five Omicron cases and the CHO has coordinated with Barangay Health Emergency Response Teams for influenza-like illness and acute respiratory infection monitoring.
He also said the five cases were clinically recovered and there was no admission in the hospital as a majority of them were mild cases.
The city government has recorded a total of 44 Omicron variants, of which five cases are re-tagged and only 39 cases were tagged in Cagayan de Oro.
Earlier, the local government reported the first batch composed of seven cases on February 2 and the second batch on February 15 that was composed of 32 cases. (PNA)
