Vaccination of senior citizen health workers in San Juan City begins

Senior citizen health care workers in San Juan City were vaccinated against COVID-19 this Thursday using the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Sinovac vaccine cannot vaccinate senior citizens, who arrived in the country earlier than the AstraZeneca vaccines.

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The first to receive the vaccine was 62 -year -old Dr. Ramon Marin, chief of a clinic of San Juan Medical Center (SJMC).

“I feel good. There’s a little sore from the injection pero I think everyone has to focus on the more positive aspect of the vaccination,” said Marin.

Of the 168 hospital staff and workers of SJMC who registered to be vaccinated, 10 were senior citizens.

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According to Marin, it is important to have an education campaign about vaccines, especially since many hospital workers are hesitant to inject.

“We are surprised that there are a good number of hospital employees, including security guards, who do not want vaccination, claiming their immunity is good anyway,” said Marin.

“These are the people we need to convince that they need all the protection they can get,” he added.

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Vaccination of senior citizen health workers in San Juan City begins

SJMC received 23 vials or 230 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Each vial has 10 dozen.

The second batch of vaccination is set for April 22.

On March 6, 141 medical frontliners of the SJMC were vaccinated using Sinovac vaccines.

Sinovac vaccines are also scheduled to be vaccinated on 140 medical workers of St. Martin de Porres Charity Hospital in San Juan.

As of March 8, the city had 148 active COVID-19 cases.

One of the measures implemented by the local government to prevent the spread of the disease is the reinstatement of the curfew from 10 pm to 5 am.

The government aims to vaccinate  and senior citizens against COVID-19 by mid-2021, an official leading the government’s COVID-19 response said Wednesday.

According to Vince Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, 117,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by American pharmaceutical company Pfizer are expected to arrive in the country in April.

On Sunday, more than 35,000 health workers were vaccinated with the COVID-19 vaccines, far from the more than 1.7 million total number of health workers in the country.