CALOOCAN CITY, May 18 (PIA) -- San Juan City has started inoculating a total of 5,850 San Juaneños, or those who fall under the A1 (medical frontliners), A2 (senior citizens), and A3 (persons with comorbidity) categories with Pfizer BioNTech-made vaccine at the FilOil Flying V Centre after the LGU received 11,700 doses of the said vaccine from the Department of Health.
This is the first batch of Pfizer vaccines from the WHO COVAX Facility that were distributed to COVID-19 high risk areas which includes Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao.
Since the Pfizer vaccines need to be stored between -80 to -60 degree Celsius, San Juan City rented an ultra-low freezer.
“Months before we had the Pfizer vaccine, we have prepared for this and already rented an ultra-cold freezer to store them properly. We opted to rent instead of buying one since it is much more economical and allowed us to spend our budget wisely and use the savings for other COVID-related activities,” Mayor Francis Zamora said.
The MDF-C8V1-PK ultra-low freezer has a temperature range of -60°C to -80°C, has a new cooling circuit that enables filterless structure, and can store up to 12,000 vials. This Japan-made freezer also comes with a system for high and low temperature alarm as well as power failure alarm to ensure that the vaccines will not be compromised and wasted. Another storage is on standby should the city receive more doses from DOH and WHO COVAX.
“Medyo may sensitivity ang bakunang ito. Ang kada dose niyan ay parang ginto. Ayaw natin ‘yan sayangin at gusto nating mapakinabangan. Kaya nag-training din po ang ating health officers para masigurado ang tamang handling ng Pfizer vaccine at mapanatili ang mataas na efficacy,” Mayor Zamora declared.
Mayor Zamora also showed the handling process of the US-made vaccine and showed the city’s preparation area in the FilOil Flying V Centre.
Each Pfizer vial contains six doses. The city targets around 500 doses of this brand to be administered today.
Currently, San Juan has vaccinated a total of 13,085 people. 8,620 of them received their first dose of Sinovac with 3,801 already able to get their full dose. San Juan still has 10,075 doses of the China-made vaccine ready for inoculation, 595 second dose were administered today.
Meanwhile, 2,460 people received their first dose of AstraZeneca from the local government. After getting 12,000 doses of the British-Swedish-made vaccine from DOH, 2,460 will be allocated for the second dose of the first batch of San Juaneños who got the AstraZeneca jab, with the remaining 9,540 allocated for the first dose of another batch of San Juan residents and frontliners, 802 of them are scheduled today.
San Juan was previously vaccinating 600-800 individuals daily. This can be ramped up to over 1,500 per day with the arrival of these vaccines and can be further increased to around 3,000 a day in multiple sites once the city gets it 100,000 doses of city-procured AstraZenca vaccines.
As of Tuesday last week, San Juan City was able to bring down its active cases to 268 from its highest recorded cases of 1,226 last April 12. (PIA NCR)
Source: Philippines Information Agency (pia.gov.ph)
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