By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

The head of the Negros Occidental Provincial Incident Management Team (PIMT) is optimistic that the province’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines will further increase as they received yesterday an additional 16,800 vials of CoronaVac jabs manufactured by Sinovac, a Chinese biotech company.

Dr. Zeaphard Caelian, PIMT head, said, the 16,800 vials were part of the 23,800 shipment to the province yesterday, wherein 7,000 were handed over to the city government of Bacolod.

According to Caelian, he had received information from the regional office of the Department of Health (DOH) stating they are expecting more shipments to arrive this month.

Caelian said the latest shipment arrived via a Cebu Pacific flight from Manila and it was immediately loaded into waiting specialized cold transport trucks operated by the provincial government and the city government of Bacolod.

The shipments were escorted by members of the Philippine National Police-Highway Patrol Group to their respective cold storage facilities.

Earlier over the weekend, Bacolod received 10,000 doses of CoronaVac vaccines.

With the recent large arrival of the vaccines, the city was again able to continue its mass vaccination program./DGB, WDJ