Cebu administers 1 million COVID-19 vaccines

CEBU, Philippines — More than one million COVID vaccines were administered in Cebu as of Wednesday, the Department of Health (DOH)-Central Visayas office announced yesterday.

Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson for the Visayas COVID-19 Vaccination Operations Center, said 615,926 people have received their first dose while 397,070 have been fully vaccinated.

“We will look forward that in the next milestone, we will be able to vaccinate one million for the first dose and have one million fully vaccinated individuals,” Loreche said.

A total of 346,970 people received their COVID vaccines in Cebu province, 316,401 in Cebu City, 189, 203 in Mandaue City and 160,522 in Lapu-Lapu City.

Loreche said a total of 1,378,565 people have been inoculated against COVID-19 in Central Visayas.

She said they are targeting the vaccination of 29,000 people per day in the region.

The DOH regional office received 102,960 doses of Pfizer jabs yesterday, of which 42,120 doses would be given to local government units in Metro Cebu while the rest would be distributed to Bohol, Negros Oriental and Siquijor.

Central Visayas had earlier received 2,183,150 vaccine doses.

Hospitals overwhelmed

Meanwhile, hospitals in Cebu City continue to be overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

The city logged 3,846 cases and five fatalities as of Wednesday.

A majority of the active cases are asymptomatic, but the city’s critical care utilization rate is at high risk at 72.7 percent in all hospitals.

Public hospitals are at critical level at 85.3 percent while five private hospitals have utilization rates of 89.6 up to 100 percent.

Cebu City is among the areas with the most number of new COVID cases in the last two weeks.

Based on the DOH-Central Visayas case bulletin on Wednesday, the active cases in Lapu-Lapu are at 1,706; Mandaue, 1,629, and the rest of Cebu province, 4,505. – Caecent Magsumbol/The Freeman