DAVAO CITY—Only less than 200 doses have not been administered yet to frontline workers for various individual reasons last week, making this region with one of the highest utilization rate in vaccines distributed last month.
The region received 16,800 Sinovac vaccines and 20,000 AstraZeneca doses and before the month of March closed for the Lenten week last week, three of six provinces posted 100 percent administration of the doses to medical personnel down to the barangay health workers. These were Davao del Sur, Davao Oriental and Davao de Oro, formerly Compostela Valley province.
Others posted almost 100 percent also, Davao del Norte (98.9 percent), Davao Occidental (92 percent) and Davao City (99.8 percent).
Overall for the Davao Region, vaccine utilization reached 99.5 percent, administering 36,634 doses and expected to be consumed this week.
The regional Department of Health here said the local government units maximized the use of their vaccine allocation to post high acceptance rate among the medical personnel.
Meanwhile, the National Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has classified Davao City a “low risk” area in its April 3 monitoring and based on two indicators—the low 2-Week Growth Rate (2WGR) and the Average Daily Attack Rate (ADAR).
This new category shows the improvement in the city’s management of the Covid-19 infection. Last week, the city was in the “minimal risk” category, a sharp decline after hovering at the top among the country’s risky areas in February.
“Last week, Davao City was classified as minimum risk, it is now at low risk. This is because we have a negative 8.74 two-week growth rate [2WGR] which is still low but our ADAR reached 1, from .92 last week,” Lopez said.