Misamis Oriental officials on Monday, November 15, ramped up the vaccination rollout as they announced the last 11 days of their campaign to inoculate as many people as possible in the province this month.

“This is our last call for those who haven’t been vaccinated yet. This will be our last rollout,” announced Misamis Oriental Governor Yevgeny Vincente Emano.

Dr. Jerie Calingasan, newly appointed Department of Health (DOH) regional director but who still calls the shots in Misamis Oriental’s pandemic response, said the vaccination rollout in the province will be concluded on November 26.

Calingasan said the capitol vaccination site will administer the first coronavirus doses for provincial government workers and their dependents for the last time on Tuesday, November 16.

“After tomorrow, there will be no more first doses. That would be the last,” he said.

Emano called on the unvaccinated in the province to waste no time and get inoculated on or before November 26.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future. I don’t know if the vaccines would still be free after that. That is why I am appealing to the unvaccinated to grab this chance,” Emano said.

He said the decision to wrap up the vaccination rollout in Misamis Oriental from November 15 to November 26 was made because Calingasan wanted the public health frontliners in the province to take a rest.

“The doctors and other health workers did their part already,” said Emano.

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But inoculating hundreds of thousands in Misamis Oriental in less than two weeks would not be a walk in the park for the provincial government.

Data shown by Emano indicated that only 249,961 people have so far been vaccinated in Misamis Oriental since the capitol started the vaccination rollout early this year.

The number is only 36.67% of the targeted 681,571 vaccine beneficiaries in the province.

Emano said there were still 431,610 people or 66.32% of the targeted vaccine recipients who have yet to receive jabs as of this posting.

The move came even as local governments throughout northern Mindanao eased quarantine restrictions, owing to a dramatic drop in the number of COVID-19 infections region-wide since October.

Misamis Oriental only logged two new single-day cases on Sunday, November 14, consistent with the downtrend that the province has been seeing since last month.

Northern Mindanao only counted a total of 25 newly documented COVID-19 infections on the same day, and the region’s recovery rate hit 95%, showed data from the DOH.

Cagayan de Oro City, once the area with the most number of single-day cases of COVID-19 in northern Mindanao, only saw eight cases on Sunday. The provinces of Bukidnon, Camiguin, and Misamis Occidental logged only 7, 2, and 6 cases, respectively. – Rappler.com