Dr. Jeffrey Ibones, head of the Cebu City Health Department (CCHD), said with the majority of senior citizens of the city now vaccinated against Covid-19, they are hopeful that the city could shift to Alert Level 1.
Based on the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF)’s new guidelines, at least 68 percent of a local government unit (LGU)’s eligible senior citizens should be fully vaccinated before the LGU can be placed under Alert Level 1.
Ibones said the number of fully vaccinated senior citizens could still increase in the next days especially with the vaccination still ongoing.
Separately, Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama said he is hopeful that the national government will downgrade their alert level on Tuesday, March 15.
Cebu City, along with the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu and Cebu Province, were placed under Alert Level 2 from March 1 to 15.
“I’ve been always hopeful. In fact, when I declared liberation or freedom with shared responsibility (on Feb. 24), it was all based on science plus figures and figures will never defy, figures will never lie,” Rama told reporters on Monday, March 14.
As of March 14, around 837,948 of 1,119,251 individuals from Cebu City have already been vaccinated against Covid-19.