Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, chief pathologist of the Department of Health in Region 7 (DOH-7), on Tuesday said Negros Oriental will receive additional coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccines once the national government delivers fresh supply to the region.

The assurance came as the province’s inoculation program slowed down due to the low supply of vaccines.

Loreche, who is also the DOH-7 spokesperson on Covid-19, told the Philippine News Agency in a phone interview that it has been almost two weeks since the region last received Covid-19 vaccines.

“We really are reliant upon the national government to give us our share of the vaccines but definitely these will be properly allocated to the Central Visayas provinces,” she said in a mix of English and Cebuano dialect.

DOH-7 received the last batch of vaccines on April 14.

“The National Vaccination Operations Center are the ones to compute that and cascade it to the regional and that’s the time that the region will send the allocations to the provinces,” Loreche said.

At present, she added, the focus of the national government is the National Capital Region or NCR Plus Bubble that includes neighboring provinces with a high number of Covid-19 cases.

Meanwhile, Negros Oriental Assistant Provincial Health Officer Dr. Liland Estacion called on health workers to be vaccinated immediately, otherwise, the vaccines that were previously set aside for them will have to be administered to the next priority group, the senior citizens.

Estacion, in a virtual press briefing Monday afternoon, said they received an advisory from the DOH that “we can already start inoculation of senior citizens and those with comorbidities”.

“I am urging the health centers of local government units who were earlier given vaccine allocations to complete the administration of vaccines to their health workers so that we can move on to the next priority groups,” to avoid delays in the inoculation rollout and wastage of vaccines, she said in a mix of English and Cebuano dialect.

As of Monday, health front-liners in the province who received the first dose totaled 6,662 while those who got the second dose of the vaccines reached 2,937, Estacion said.

The latest batch of vaccines that Negros Oriental received last April 17 comprised 2,720 doses, which she said is just good for initial inoculation.

The province has around 15,000 medical front-liners in the priority sector for vaccination but not all of them have received the vaccines because many declined for personal reasons, Estacion said. (PNA)