VACCINATION with the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine, an updated booster against coronavirus disease, was launched in Cebu on Monday, June 26, 2023, with an initial six of 14 hospitals now offering the shot.
Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, assistant department head of the Cebu City Health Department, and Dr. Peter Mancao, medical director of the Cebu City Medical Center, said at least six hospitals in Cebu City have opened their doors to provide free vaccination.
These are Chong Hua Hospital, Cebu City Medical Center, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital (CDUH), St. Vincent Hospital and Camp Lapu-Lapu in Barangay Apas.
Eight additional hospitals—Velez General Hospital, Perpetual Succour Hospital, Visayas Community Medical Center, Southwestern University Phinma, Miller Hospital, St. Anthony Mother and Child Hospital, Philippine National Police, and Ace Medical Center, will soon provide the same vaccination.
Since Cebu City has received only 8,000 doses so far, medical frontliners will be prioritized, followed by the senior citizens, Ibones said.
Eligible are those frontliners who have already received two doses of the booster. So the bivalent vaccine will serve as a third booster, Ibones added.
The two top officials of the Cebu City Government--Mayor Michael Rama and Vice Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia--were among the recipients of the bivalent Covid-19 vaccine introduced at CDUH during a launching event hosted by Dr. Potenciano “Yong” Larrazabal III at the medical arts building on Monday.
In his statement before the hospital’s medical staff, Rama expressed his gratitude to the Lord for keeping him healthy despite what he called a “medical challenge”; he noted that more than 1,700 people had died of Covid-19 in the city.
Rama also expressed his desire for the calamity to never recur. Covid-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020.
Those who were vaccinated along with Rama and Garcia were Larrazabal, Mancao, Cebu City Health Officer Dr. Daisy Villa, Dr. Pek Eng-Lim of the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation and some officials of the Department of Health in Central Visayas.
When Cebu City’s Covid-19 response unit Emergency Operations Center closed its operations on May 31, 2023, it reported that it had recorded 61,831 people who tested positive for Covid-19 with 1,805 deaths in the past three years.
The US Food and Drug Administration explained that since Covid-19 changes over time, one must keep his protection against Covid-19 updated by getting a bivalent Covid-19 vaccine.
The vaccine is called bivalent because it contains two components: one that corresponds to the original virus strain to provide broad protection against Covid-19 and a component that corresponds to the more contagious omicron variants that have emerged since. (PAC, TPT, CTL)