This city is striving to administer a daily average of 2,500 doses of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccines to reach 70-percent population protection by December, the city health officer said on Thursday.

Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, head of the Cebu City Health Office, said the city could administer as much as 500 doses of vaccines in one site alone, as more people are now eager to be master-listed for immunization.

“We are praying for a fair allocation of vaccines for Cebu City. We have one million population. Our target is to vaccinate 700,000 of the residents, then we need more doses inasmuch as we don’t want to open, then close and open again our vaccination sites,” Ibones told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) in an interview.

With the target 70-percent population protection, the city needs 1.4 million doses of vaccines, he said.

The city-run vaccination sites – the University of Cebu campuses in J. Alcantara and Banilad, Robinsons Galleria, SM Seaside, and NOAH facility in the South Road Properties – on Thursday resumed operations after the Department of Health (DOH) 7 (Central Visayas) provided the city with 14,900 vaccines.

This was higher than the 5,000 supposed allocation on Wednesday, with the increase in doses given after then-acting Mayor Michael Rama requested the DOH-7 to give them more vaccines to prevent another shutdown of the inoculation sites.

The five city-run venues had been closed twice as vaccine supplies ran out.

Two more centers — a gymnasium in the upland village of Bonbon and a religious order-run school — were also established as vaccination sites two weeks ago.

The Bonbon gymnasium served the hinterland residents of Bonbon, Babag, Sudlon 1 and 2, Sinsin, Malubog Pung-ol Sibugay, and Taptap while the Don Bosco Technical School in Punta Princesa served those in Pamutan, Buhisan, Sapangdaku, and Toong.

On July 2, another vaccination site will be opened in the mountain barangay of Cambinocot, Ibones said.

He thanked Globe Telecom and Smart Communications for providing their personnel with free Internet connection for the online master-listing of mountain barangay residents.

He said the city has been lobbying for more allocation of vaccine doses to ensure continuous inoculation activities and achieve the desired population protection against the coronavirus by December.

“Actually, we’ve been requesting more vaccines. Although we know that the country doesn’t have that much of a supply of vaccines coming from the manufacturers. We have understood such limitations but what we just want to relay is that Cebu City needs a fair allocation of the vaccines,” Ibones said in Cebuano.

The city needs to ride on with the enthusiasm of the people to get vaccinated, he said. (PNA)