This was announced by Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, chief pathologist of the Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH 7) and spokesperson of the Visayas Vaccination Operations Center (VVOC) on Monday.
Loreche said the extension aims to improve the vaccination performance of local government units (LGUs) so the region can be deescalated from Alert Level 2 to Alert Level 1.
The fourth round of the NVD which took place last March 10 to 12, aimed to inoculate primarily those receiving second doses and booster shots and to vaccinate senior citizens due to the criteria set by the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
She said only the 68 percent senior citizens vaccination ratio, which is among the requirements, has not been met in Central Visayas, except for Siquijor, for the entire region’s alert level status to be deescalated.
The computation for the percentage of deescalation is 80 percent of the total population of senior citizens of the 85 percent of total eligible population.
Loreche, however, said the vaccination ratio requirement for the senior citizen population will now be downgraded to 70 percent.
With this, she believes there will be Metro Cebu LGUs that will qualify for the Alert Level 1 status.
In the three-day vaccination drive, Central Visayas vaccinated only 4,319 senior citizens or 3.09 percent of the 139,647 target seniors to vaccinate.
Of the number, Cebu Province vaccinated the biggest number with 1,629 seniors although it is just 2.13 percent of its target senior population of 76,421.
Bohol and Negros Oriental vaccinated 1,269 and 437, respectively, while Siquijor vaccinated only 61 seniors.
The provinces of Bohol has a target of 23,640 senior citizens while Negros Oriental has 35,511.
Siquijor did not set a target since it had already vaccinated 68 percent of its eligible population of senior citizens and was already placed under the new normal since March 1.
The highly urbanized city of Cebu also vaccinated about 691 senior citizens during the three-day vaccination drive, although it did not set a target as well since it is still waiting for updated data from the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC).
As of March 13, Cebu City was already at 66.36 percent of vaccinated seniors from its 88,000 eligible seniors.
The cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu were also able to vaccinate 120 and 112 of their respective targets of 537 and 3,538.
Data from the VVOC also showed that Mandaue City already exceeded the vaccination requirement with 91.46 percent fully vaccinated seniors from its 23,956 seniors.
The cities of Lapu-Lapu and Naga were still at 51.68 percent out of the 31,322 population of seniors and 52.73 percent of 10,944 seniors, respectively.
Talisay City already exceeded the requirement with 78.02 percent of its 15,520 eligible seniors.
The towns of Cordova and Minglanilla have also exceeded the 68 percent, with 74.68 percent and 80.76 percent, respectively.
Cordova town has only about 3,875 eligible seniors while Minglanilla has 7,582.
The towns of Consolacion and Liloan have so far vaccinated 51.21 percent and 51.97 percent of their respective 11,527 and 11,600 eligible seniors.
Overall, Metro Cebu has reached the vaccination ratio of 66.23 percent of the 204,326 eligible senior citizens.