CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (PNA) –This city recorded no new cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on Monday, February 15, a first in 11 months since the first case in the city was recorded last year.

City Health Office acting chief Dr. Lorraine Nery said the absence of even a single case meant that as of Tuesday, the city's active cases remained at 373, out of the 3,689 cases since the pandemic was declared in March last year.

"For the past 24 hours, there were no detection of medical incidences in the CIUs (City Isolation Units) and TTMFs (Temporary Treatment and Monitoring Facilities). In the past 24 hours we only have a (minor) step-down transfer from Northern Mindanao Medical Center (NMMC) going to TTMF," Nery said Tuesday.

In the same period, Nery said the city recorded 3,130 recoveries, representing an 85.9 percent recovery rate. The city has 176 COVID-129 deaths.

Vaccination simulation

Also on the same day, CHO held the first in a series of COVID-19 vaccination simulations at the city-run JR Borja General Hospital (JRBGH), participated in by representatives of private hospitals and other medical facilities here.

Nery said the CHO will again conduct another set of simulations in March, but this time it will be held in barangay communities.

She said designating more doctors and nurses and a color-coding triaging system at the patient assessment site were among the suggestions made by health officials.

"The DOH witnessed the vaccination drill and had a checklist of its observations and suggestions and we had a post-evaluation discussion on what improvements were needed for the actual vaccination.

Overall, the vaccination drill which is in preparation for the actual vaccination of health care workers in the hospitals proceeded well," Nery said.

The simulated vaccination drill in JRBGH came after two weeks of preparations and is in compliance with the DOH directive to stage vaccination drills in a government hospital.

The six-step vaccination process for health care workers consists of registration, pre-screening and counseling, assessment, actual vaccination, post-vaccination observation or monitoring, and a complaint desk.

"There will be no walk-in patients because the vaccine recipients will be contacted the day before their scheduled appointment. Everything is calibrated (from the number of recipients a day and the volume of vaccines a day) to avoid wasting of vaccines," Nery said, referring to walk-in and community-based actual vaccination settings.

Meanwhile, Dr. Elma Oclarit, DOH Region 10's focal person for the vaccination program in Northern Mindanao, said they are expecting the arrival of COVID-19 vaccines around the third quarter of the year.

Oclarit said the first to be administered will be medical front-liners, indigent communities including senior citizens, and uniformed personnel such as the police, military, rescuers, and other pre-identified priority groups.

In order to achieve "herd immunity" against COVID-19, he said at least 75 percent of the population must be vaccinated, although based on the nationwide projection, it will take at least three years to achieve the projected figure.