Covid-19 vaccination efforts continue in the Davao Region

City’s Measles-Rubella vaxx drive extended

The City Health Office has extended its Measles-Rubella (MR) – bivalent Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) Supplementation Immunization Activity campaign until June 15.

The campaign, which aims to immunize children 0-59 months old against measles, rubella, and polio, was initially planned to last for the entire month of May. However, since the target population of children to be inoculated is yet to be reached, the Department of Health has extended the program until the second week of this month.

CHO Officer-in-Charge Dr. Tomas Miguel Ababon, during the I-Speak Media Conference on Thursday, said that from May 1 to June 7, the CHO immunized a total of 130,063 children with the (MR) vaccine, this makes up around 84 percent of the target population of 154,138.

For the OPV, the CHO inoculated 21,529 children or around 76 percent of the targeted 28,423 children for the same period.

“The national target is 95

By MAYA M. PADILLO

TheDepartment of Health-Davao Region (DOHDavao Region) announced on Wednesday that the Covid-19 vaccination efforts will continue throughout the Davao Region.

percent, and with this extension, probably Davao will achieve around 87 percent; hopefully we can reach 90 percent [for MR vaccination],” Ababon said.

Though the CHO has taken the vaccination drive to every purok of each barangay in the city, Ababon said the campaign met challenges due to the numerous far-flung barangays that are not easily accessible.

Another challenge to the campaign is the presence of a certain population of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, with some preferring to have their kids immunized by the family physician.

The target population set by the DOH, according to Ababon, in itself is also a challenge since these numbers do not necessarily reflect the actual population size of children in various barangays of the city.

“Some of the targeted population is way above the actual population of the area, or of the districts. Kasi merong (This is because there are) in-migration

FCITY’S, P10

DOH-Davao has received a total of 6,750 doses of Pfizer adult and pedia Covid-19 vaccines, which arrived at the Davao International Airport (DIA) on June 7, 2023.

The vaccines were immediately transported to the Department of Health - Davao Center’s Health Development cold storage facility. According to the media release of DOH-Davao, the 5,850 doses of Pfizer adult are intended for those aged 12 years and above, and the 900 doses of Pfizer are for the pedia or those aged 5-11 years.

Qualified individuals who want to avail the said vaccines can contact the nearest local health centers.

DOH-Davao reported that there are 3,353,416 individuals or 88.3% of the target population in the Davao Region are fully vaccinated as of March 10, 2023.

Meanwhile, based on the Regional Situation Update on Covid-19 in Davao Region as of May 29, 2023, the healthcare utilization showed a regional hospital capacity of 27% for non-ICU bed use and 43% for ICU bed use.

There were 30 severe and critical admissions out of 325 of Covid-19. There were 166 new cases recorded in the past week, May 22 to 28, 2023, which was higher by 6.41% compared to the cases reported last May 15-21, 2023.

There were three actual death