Bacolod City - The approval by the Department of Health to start the vaccination of those in the A4 category, or essential workers, signals the start of the mass inoculation in Negros Occidental, Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson said recently.

Lacson said they have already started the vaccination of those in the A4 category, using the AstraZeneca vaccines purchased by the provincial government.

"We just hope that the national government will start distributing more vaccines to the provinces, considering that most of the local government units in the National Capital Region have already reached the 70 percent inoculation of their population, in order to achieve herd immunity. If we are open to A4, practically, we are opening to all already," Lacson, who welcomed the development, said.

The indigent sector belongs to the A5 category, while those in the A1 to A3 categories are health workers, senior citizens, and those with comorbidities.

As of Sunday, Negros Occidental had 664 Covid cases, the Provincial Incident Management Team said.

The DOH, meanwhile, reported yesterday the detection of 466 more cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant, including 52 in Western Visayas.
(Gilbert Bayoran via The Visayan Daily Star (TVDS), photo courtesy of TVDS)