The Covid-19 infection in Cebu City has gone down significantly lately although not in the same level as in September to December last year when the number of cases reported daily was in single digits. Between February to March this year, the daily infection rate moved dangerously upward, consistently hitting the hundreds. Starting in late March, the numbers settled at double digits.
What is remarkable is that the city government managed to control the spread of the virus on their own unlike last year when Manila dispatched retired generals and additional troops and hardware to contain a raging outbreak. Obviously, our people whose cavalier behavior was condemned as largely responsible for our becoming the center of the epidemic in the country, have learned their lesson and behaved more responsibly.
The bad thing that can happen is that we will let our guard down now that the situation has stabilized and a vaccination program is underway. The reality is that the virus is evolving and the efforts to eradicate it continue to be a work in progress. We should listen to our good sense and heed the counsel from our health authorities to observe the practices that have been proven to be effective in avoiding infection. Wear a mask. Observe physical distancing.
This is especially so since our vaccination program is being operated like a light switch. You know, off and on. One week, a rollout is announced, the following week, the vaccination centers are shut down, followed by a reopening and another shutdown. If you want consistency and reliability, do not look for it in our vaccination campaign.
Not the fault of anyone managing the program. The fact is that there is simply not enough vaccine to jab into the arms of the willing. Here we are, convincing everyone to have himself inoculated so that we can attain herd immunity even while we know that most of those who will be persuaded will be turned down when they show up at a vaccination center because we have used up our allocation.
But this hopefully shall, too, pass. Last week, the national government, which is our only source of vaccine, announced the arrival of 1,500,000 doses of Sinovac from China on Friday, followed by 2,030,000 of AstraZeneca from Covax, a global initiative of the World Health Organization to help countries that are disadvantaged in the procurement of the vaccine.
The shipment of Sinovac is part of the 25,000,000 doses that China had agreed to sell the Philippines. There is yet no known timetable, however, for the delivery of the balance.
How many doses of the newly-arrived vaccines can the city expect to receive? A look into the quantity of our last share may provide a clue. On May 1, we received 9,000 doses. By Friday, almost all of them were gone, prompting the local vaccination board to announce yet another pause in the immunization of the elderly and those with comorbidities starting yesterday as the vaccines available were enough only for the administration of the second dose on health workers.
City Health Officer Dr. Jeffrey Ibones said last week that Mayor Edgardo Labella was assured by the country’s vaccination czar, Carlito Galvez, that 1.7 million doses will be allocated to Cebu out of the newly-arrived Sinovac vaccines. The good doctor may have been misquoted or he may not have heard the mayor correctly. That or Galvez expected more than the 1.5 million doses that actually arrived.
Anyway, whatever it is that we can get would be most welcome even if it means that our vaccination program will be operated like a light switch again. It’s a worn-out phrase but its truth remains to this day: Beggars can’t be choosers.