BY ADRIAN P. NEMES III
Executive director Em Ang of the Emergency Operations Center said the Bacolod City government is eyeing a public-private partnership agreement to establish a molecular and convalescent plasma laboratory in Bacolod.
Ang said Mayor Evelio Leonardia intends to make the laboratory operational as quickly as possible, as part of the preparation of the city against any future surge of Covid cases in the light of the emergence of new and more transmissible variants.
Ang said the convalescent plasma, donated by persons who have recovered from Covid-19, is given as adjunctive life-saving therapy to hospitalized patients with severe or critical symptoms of the disease.
She said this will help them recover since it exerts an antiviral effect, suppressing virus replication before a patient has mounted his or her own immune responses.
POSITIVITY RATE DOWN
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 positivity rate in Bacolod slid to 15.36 percent, as of Saturday, based on the report of the City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit.
This is almost two percent lower than the positivity rate of 17.06 percent reported by CESU in the previous week.
At the government-run Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital, 124 employees were either quarantined or on sick leave due to exposure to Covid patients, while 10 tested positive of the infection.
As of Saturday, 25 patients admitted to the CLMMRH were positive for the disease while 42 were considered as Covid-related hospitalization.
Of the 25 positive patients, only one had been fully vaccinated and experienced moderate pneumonia, while 3.5 percent of the total admissions have received their first dose.
96 PERCENT
The hospital said in a statement that 96 percent of the total admitted Covid patients have not been inoculated, and 16 to 32 percent experienced severe to critical symptoms. It added that 80 percent of the fatalities had not received their jabs, too.
BPO JABS CONTINUE
The site-based vaccination drive of the Bacolod City government for nightshift employees of Business Process Outsourcing companies continued Friday night.
Leonardia oversaw the vaccination of employees of Ubiquity Global Services on the second night of the vaccine rollout, a press release from the city said.
The project is in partnership with the city government, through the Emergency Operations Center and the Covid-19 Vaccination Council, and the BPO companies.
Supervising from Ubiquity were site director Biboi Salar, facilities and administrative officer Neil Puertollano, and human resources engagement specialist Jeric Libiano, with the assistance of HR and admin personnel, the press release said.
Puertollano said they expected to inoculate more than 800 employees.
NIGHT SHIFT, TOO
The city started its onsite night shift vaccination drive at Concentrix Thursday night.
The EOC said that 4,753 BPO employees have been inoculated as of August 15.
The CoVaC has vaccinated 180,045 Bacolod residents, with 79,656 fully inoculated.
The vaccine rollout is supervised by Ang, executive director of EOC and coordinator of CoVaC, OIC City Health Officer Dr. Edwin Miraflor Jr., and EOC deputy medical Dr. Chris Sorongon, with the assistance of barangay officials and vaccination doctors, the press release added.*
