Siruma’s pastoral hall gets DOH’s nod in vax SimEx

By Paulo DS. Papa

The parish pastoral hall of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Barangay Poblacion, Siruma, Camarines Sur was approved by the Department of Health (DOH) as the town’s vaccination site after it passed and got a grade of 98.1 percent during the simulation exercise (SimEx).

Elaine Avila, secretary of the parish rectory, told Bicol Mail that before the SimEx on Apr. 7, parish priest Rev. Fr. Ronald Tud granted the request of Mayor Carina Polinga to use the pastoral hall as the town’s proposed vaccination site.

The four rooms in the pastoral hall will be used as: waiting and screening area; counselling and health education area; vaccination, post vaccination and monitoring area; and the cold chain storage area.

The refrigerators that will be used for vaccine storage are already in placed at the Municipal Health Office (MHO) of the coastal town.

In a social media post, the MHO thanked the parish priest and barangay officials for their efforts to provide the town a vaccination site once the local government gets the Covid-19 vaccines it procured for its constituents.

Prior to the SimEx, 24 frontliners consisting of 22 Rural Health Unit (RHU) personnel and two responders of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (MDRRMO) already received the first shot of AztraZeneca vaccine on Mar.23, this year.

As of press time, Siruma has only one Covid-19 positive case, a 43-years old male from Barangay Poblacion, who is under quarantine at the Bicol Medical Center. Last year, only five persons were recorded as positive for Covid-19.

Meanwhile, the Bicol Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF-EID) is still waiting for the response of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on the request of Camarines Sur Gov. Migz Villafuerte to place the entire province under General Community Quarantine (GCQ) due to the continued rise of Covid-19 cases in Camarines Sur, including the cities of Naga and Iriga.

As of April 18, confirmed cases in the entire province reached 1,819 with 423 active cases, 1,312 recoveries and 84 deaths.

VACCINATION SITE. The pastoral hall of the St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Siruma, Camarines Sur was approved by the Department of Health as the town’s Covid-19 vaccination site after the successful conduct of a simulation exercise recently. PHOTO BY PAULO DS. PAPA