The Quezon City government is ready for its Covid-19 vaccination rollout on Wednesday after receiving the CoronaVac jabs donated by China.

“’Yung aming nag-iisang local government-run Covid-19 referral hospital, the Quezon City General Hospital, we already received our allocation kahapon din (For our only local government-run Covid-19 referral hospital, the Quezon City General Hospital, we already received our allocation yesterday),” Belmonte said in an interview with the Philippine News Agency on Tuesday.

Medical front-liners will be the first to receive the Sinovac shots based on the directives of the national government and the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19.

QC Task Force on Covid-19 chief Joseph Juico said they are targeting to inoculate about 100 medical front-liners on the first day.

“A total of 300 doses were delivered to us for the first shots. The next 300 doses will be arriving in time for the second shots. That is, before the 28th day from the first jab,” he said.

Belmonte is confident more of the city’s medical front-liners will agree to receive the vaccines, which arrived in the country on Sunday and immediately dispatched to local government units the following day.

Initially, just like a few other hospitals in Metro Manila, their medical front-liners were hesitant in receiving vaccines, according to Belmonte.

She said this may be due to misinformation, fake news, and demonization about the quality of the China-made vaccines.

“Now after we made an effort to conduct town hall meetings wherein all of their concerns were properly addressed and in fact it was shown that when you’re talking about efficacy, it would protect you 100 percent from death, 100 percent from the severity and even from hospitalization, then they were convinced about the Sinovac vaccines,” Belmonte said.

The news of St. Luke’s Medical Center Hospital’s request for 5,000 doses of Sinovac from the national government, as reported by NTF chief Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. to President Rodrigo Duterte, might influence other medical front-liners to get vaccinated, Belmonte said.

“If there’s vaccine confidence among St. Luke’s doctors, who for me are one of the best doctors at least in our city, there’s confidence in Sinovac, then that’s very good news. Hopefully, that would influence other health workers to embrace the vaccine as well,” Belmonte said.

If permitted, Belmonte is willing to receive her first shot of the Sinovac vaccine.

“No hesitations. None at all,” she said. (PNA)