THE Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) said there are a total of 203,510 available doses of Covid-19 vaccines in various vaccine storage centers in Metro Cebu.
In the data shown by the VVOC daily briefer Friday, September 24, 2021, of the 203,510 vaccine doses from different brands, 30,428 were allocated for the first dose and 173,082 for the second dose.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson of VVOC, said based on the inventory of Metro Cebu that was submitted to VVOC, which included their jab performance, local government units (LGUs) have enough supply of vaccines to be administered in their areas.
For the first dose, VVOC recorded 30,428 vaccines from Cebu City (4,616), Mandaue City (5,444), Lapu-Lapu City (3,920), Talisay City (2,541), Naga City (5,227), Minglanilla (2,132), Consolacion (5,047) and Cordova (1,501).
For the second dose, the vaccine center recorded 173,082 vaccines from Cebu City (70,009), Mandaue City (24,762), Lapu-Lapu City (28,143), Talisay City (15,959), Naga City (10,054), Minglanilla (11,033), Consolacion (9,976) and Cordova (3,146).
Loreche said the data does not include the recent allocation of Gamaleya for the second dose, as well as the first-dose allocation of Pfizer this week.
VVOC's role
VVOC's primary role is to manage the vaccine allocation of each LGU, depending on the target vaccinees and supply left, Loreche said.
She cited Cordova as an example. It had 1,501 vaccines for the first dose, but its target vaccinees was over 2,000.
Loreche explained the VVOC will borrow allocations from other LGUs that have more vaccines to patch up its lack of supply. Once another set of vaccines arrives, the borrowing LGU will be allocated with more vaccines and will return the number of borrowed vaccines.
She said the rationale of the allocation is that if a certain LGU has a difficulty in finishing their vaccine supply, instead of having an allocation in the next deliveries, it will be distributed to the LGU with a faster rollout.
Vaccine wastage in Cebu
Loreche said Metro Cebu only recorded 202 doses of wastage of vaccines against Covid-19 from Cebu City (86), Cebu Province (74), Lapu-Lapu City (3) and Mandaue City (1).
Loreche said the most common reason for the recorded wastage was due to incomplete vaccine doses in multi-dose vials.
In the extraction technique, Loreche said the way the vaccines were aspirated has exceeded the ideal amount of vaccine to be extracted, with that a good for 10-doses-vial could only aspirate six doses.
Another reason for the wastage was there were floaters or particles seen in some of the vaccines. Some of them also did not have a clear consistency, Loreche said.
Loreche said quality control measures were implemented to assure the safety of vaccines.
She said the wastage happened during the early months of the vaccination rollout. (KFD)