By Dominique Gabriel G. Bañaga

Following a report issued by the Department of Health in Western Visayas (DOH-6) that Negros Occidental has the most number of unvaccinated individuals in the region, Provincial Administrator Rayfrando Diaz said that local government units (LGUs) in the province are working double time on their COVID-19 vaccination program.

Diaz said that as of yesterday, 419,000 Negrenses have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, which is still way below the 1.8 million target population for vaccination in the province.

Diaz said region-wide, the province is ranked second in terms of having the highest number of fully vaccinated individuals.

“We have to contextualize, unvaccinated it depends on the target which is 1.8 million for Negros Occidental which is greater than all other provinces. Naturally our individuals left unvaccinated is also greater,” he explained.

Diaz said they still need to vaccinate 1.4 million individuals.

“The reason why we are only at number two is that the vaccines only arrived lately. It’s only during the last three weeks that several vaccines of different brands arrived in the province,” Diaz pointed out.

“Our LGUs are taking time to utilize the vaccines released to the province by the national government so that we could request for additional vaccines until we will vaccinate all the 1.8 million at the soonest time possible,” he added.

Meanwhile, the topnotcher LGUs in the vaccination program are Silay City, Victorias City, Talisay City, and Cadiz City, Diaz said.

Since the utilization is high in these areas most number of vaccines are released to them. While in areas where utilization and vaccine acceptance is low, lower supplies are also given to them, he said.

“We are catching up because vaccine supplies are arriving,” Diaz further added./DGB, WDJ