Negros Occidental and Bacolod City received 348,360 more doses of COVID-19 vaccines on Monday, October 18.
Negros Occidental received 306,060 doses and Bacolod City got 42,300 doses, Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz said.
The province received 4,700 doses of AstraZeneca, 175,000 doses of Sinovac, and 126,360 doses of Pfizer vaccines, he said
Negros Occidental also received 17,000 doses of Moderna vaccines on Friday, October 15.
Bacolod City received 11,700 doses of Pfizer and 30,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines on Monday.
The Negros Occidental vaccination drive is continuing on a daily basis because the national government has been giving the province a lot of vaccines, he said.
“I hope our fellow Negrenses will take this opportunity to have themselves vaccinated especially now that we have more options in terms of vaccine brands,” he said.
Diaz said the provincial government is ready to begin vaccinating minors aged 12 to 17 years old as soon as authority is granted by the Department of Health.
“As soon as we are allowed we will administer the vaccines on the minors without delay,” he said.
The message of the Department of Health is that the vaccines will minimize the possibility of COVID-19 deaths and infection, he added.
Diaz said they are happy with the vaccination performance of the local government units, the majority of whom use up all the vaccines delivered to them on a daily basis.
The AstraZeneca vaccines that arrived Monday were part of the supply purchased by the provincial government, he added.
Meanwhile, Dr. Chris Sorongon, Bacolod Emergency Operations Center deputy for medical data and analysis, said the city government has already vaccinated more than half of its target population to reach herd immunity.
He said 337,304 residents have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Bacolod City as of October 16, and 157,825 are fully inoculated.*