By Rey Anthony Chiu | 12:20 PM September 18, 2021
If no other vaccine arrives between today and October 10, by then, Bohol would have nothing to inoculate Boholanos and protect them from the dreaded coronavirus disease and its Delta variant.
At 447,922 total vaccines received since March 6, 2021 when the first vaccine delivery arrived in Bohol, and at 332,218 vaccine doses already dispensed until September 16, Bohol now has total balance of 115,704 vaccine doses.
Dispensing a daily average of 5,140 vaccines in the last three days, the 115,704 would only last for 22 days at least, data from the Bohol Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF) on the management of Emerging Infectious Diseases bared.
In the same report shared last September 16, BIATF said that based from the data obtained from the Provincial Health Office, the base of the Provincial Vaccination Operation Center, a total of 167,008 Boholanos have received the second dose of the two-dose Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Pfizer, Moderna and Sinopharm and single dose of Johnson and Johnsons.
The recent fully vaccinated data is 13,378 more than the September 13 vaccination progress report which showed 153,630 Boholanos with the second dose.
In the September 16 report, those with second dose reached 67,008, which also constitute 11.97% of the over-all target of 70% of the total population to be vaccinated.
The latest census on population and housing by the Philippine Statistics Authority showed 1,394,329 Boholanos in the count.
According to health experts at the Department of Health, attaining toe ideal 70% of the population given full protection also gets to the community its dreamt herd immunity.
Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection, according to the World Health Organization.
Vaccines train our immune systems to create proteins that fight disease, known as ‘antibodies’, just as would happen when we are exposed to a disease but – crucially – vaccines work without making us sick, health experts at WHO claim.
Vaccinated people are protected from getting the disease in question and passing on the pathogen, breaking any chains of transmission.
To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population.
The 70% of that count would be 976,030 Boholanos to be reached out, inoculated and given the proper protection against the virus that has claimed the lives of 389 as of September 18.
Bohol also improved its vaccination for the first dose vaccines with 165,210 recently vaccinated as against the 153,630 as reported last September 13. A total of 2,194 Boholanos got their initial doses in the last three days.
Earlier, BIATF spokesperson Dr. Cesar Tomas Lopez said Bohol vaccination centers have a best case scenario of total maximum daily average of 7,500 jabs.
In the past three days however, vaccination teams all over Bohol could only manage a total of 15,572 or 5,190 jabs per day for all vaccination teams.
Bohol has been largely dependent on the free vaccines which the national government is giving to all Filipinos. The delivery of such however staggers as any vaccine that arrives in Manila has to be allocated to all provinces needing it, sometimes prioritizing those with high surge of cases.
With this scenario, some of the country’s local government units allocated their funds to purchase vaccines so they do not have to be at the mercy of waiting when their share of the national allocation arrives.
Bohol has initially allocated P100 million, but according to Governor Arthur Yap, the country’s vaccine czar has told him to rather keep the money, as it would only be enough for a few vaccines.
Meanwhile, in reports, Ormoc City, in Leyte has allocated an initial P350 million for their LGU vaccination program rollout. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)