More than 85 percent of Baguio City’s senior citizens have been fully vaccinated against the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
As of September 27, a total of 27,579 or 85.9 percent of the 32,108 registered elderlies at the bakuna.baguio.gov.ph website have been fully inoculated per data from the City Health Services Office and the Management Information Technology Division (MITD) of the City Mayor’s Office.
Vaccination coverage for priority A2 may reach more than 90 percent once the 2,228 partially vaccinated senior citizens received their second dose in the coming weeks.
At least 2,301 or 7.2 percent remains unvaccinated who were tracked to be residing in barangays Irisan (190), Camp 7 (116), Bakakeng Norte Sure (90), Loakan Proper (88), Bakakeng Central (82), Asin Road (78), Pinget (62), Sto. Tomas Proper (61), San Luis Village (60), Dontogan (59), Pinsao proper (57), and Pacdal (51). Other barangays have less than 50 senior citizens unvaccinated while the MITD recorded 174 elderlies residing outside Baguio City who registered in the city’s official vaccination website.
Earlier, Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong sought the assistance of barangay officials to help the city government in locating and convincing senior citizens in their jurisdiction to take their jabs as soon as possible.
The city abides by the Department of Health’s prioritization of vaccinating the vulnerable groups to avoid severe COVID-19 complications, hospitalization and death.
CHSO data reveals that of the 453 deaths recorded since the start of the vaccination last March 2 up to Sept. 29, there are 19 who were either fully or partially vaccinated while 434 were unvaccinated. Majority of those who died are unvaccinated senior citizens and those with comorbidities.
A mathematical computation on vaccine effectiveness in the city showed that unvaccinated persons have 18x more odds of COVID-19 death than the fully vaccinated individuals.
The World Health Organization said that while the vaccines help lower the chances of developing severe symptoms or dying, some people still die but most likely this is due to factors such as age risks and comorbidities. – Jessa Samidan
