THE Mandaue City Vaccination Operations Center (VOC) will now move on to the mass vaccination of the rest of the population at the barangay level starting this month.
For the past months, the city’s vaccination against Covid-19 has been focused on the first five priority groups: A1 (medical frontliners), A2 (senior citizens), A3 (persons with comorbidity), A4 (essential frontliners), and A5 (indigents).
Dr. Ligaya Dargantes, operations head of the Mandaue VOC, told SunStar Cebu that they will not be strict in following the established priority groups in their vaccination program. As long as the individual is 18 years old and above, he or she will be accommodated in the barangay vaccination.
She added that they have tapped the barangay captains to book their vaccination schedule with the VOC.
Aside from the weekday vaccination schedules in five sites in the city and the nightly vaccination for the A4 priority group every Friday, Mandaue City also conducts mobile vaccination in one barangay every weekend for senior citizens, persons with disabilities and breastfeeding mothers.
Dargantes said the barangay vaccination for the rest of the population can be done any day, depending on the availability and request of the barangay.
She said barangay vaccination that will be scheduled on weekends will be incorporated with the mobile vaccination clinic.
On Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, they started with the Philippine Red Cross mobile vaccination clinic in Barangay Labogon.
But on weekdays, Dargantes said they will set up a mini vaccination site in the barangay which has enough space with proper ventilation for its constituents to ensure that social distancing will be followed.
She added that during the barangay vaccination, they can start to accommodate walk-ins or those who have no online access.
Dargantes, however, emphasized the need to register online, especially among those who have Internet access, as failure to do so could mean a five- to 10-minute delay in the vaccination process of each vaccinee.
She said the constituents should inquire with their barangay captain if they want to get vaccinated during the barangay vaccination.
Dargantes said they still need the barangays to list interested constituents prior to the scheduled date so that the VOC could allocate vaccines for them.
As of Sept. 3, the Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) reported that Mandaue City has administered a total of 283,274 doses of vaccines, 166,120 of which were for the first dose and 117,154 for the second dose.
The VVOC also reported that 56.17 percent of the total eligible population of Mandaue City has received the first dose while 39.62 percent has been fully vaccinated.