A total of 8,000 doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac from the Department of Health (DOH) have been shipped to Bohol allowing the province to sustain its continued inoculation of local frontliners.

Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO) chief Anthony Damalerio who received the vaccines on behalf of the Capitol said the doses were the fifth batch of vaccines from the national government.

According to Damalerio, the vaccines were shipped to Tubigon on board a Lite Ferry vessel on Saturday morning then turned over to the province’s cold storage facility.

Based on data from the Bohol Inter-Agency Task Force, the province has received 45,880 vaccines from the national government excluding the recently delivered doses.

Some 40,740 of the doses were from Sinovac while the rest at 5,140 were from AstraZeneca.

The same data indicated that 35,386 individuals in the province were inoculated against COVID-19 as of April 29.

According to Damalerio, health authorities will still continue the vaccination of the province’s frontliners before proceeding with the inoculation of senior citizens.

“Tiwason pa ang naa sa A-1 Category, frontliners. Wala pay advise ang para sa senior citizens,” Damalerio said.  

BIATF spokesperson Dr. Yul Lopez had earlier noted that 150,000 elderly persons in the province have expressed willingness to be vaccinated.

The senior citizens’ names have been listed and submitted to national health authorities for allocation of doses.

Damalerio said that more vaccines are expected to arrive in the forthcoming weeks but the number of doses is still undetermined.

There has been a noticeable slowdown in the rollout of vaccines nationwide as jabs purchased by the national government have not arrived. (R. Tutas)