20 areas in EV have confirmed Delta cases

TACLOBAN CITY – The regional office of the Department of Health (DOH) provided additional vaccines to local government units in areas with recorded Delta variant of the dreaded coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
This was confirmed by Jelyn Lopez-Malibago, DOH information officer, who said that providing more vaccines to these areas will help slowdown the transmission of the virus.
“We need to increase vaccine allocation to areas with Delta variants so that we can protect more people from severe case and or death thru vaccination,” Malibago said.
“Areas with recorded Delta variant cases are provided with additional vaccine allocation. However, we cannot provide you with the actual number since mostly, the vaccines that the region received especially recently are preallocated.Meaning, it is the national vaccine operations center(NVOC) which decides as to how many will be allocated per province,” she added.
This disclosure of Malibago came in the wake of the statement of Leyte Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla who made during the recent meeting of the  Leyte Provincial Peace and Order Council attended by the mayors of additional 1,000 doses of vaccines were provided to LGUs in the province that recorded the highly transmissible variant.
Malibago said that the allocation is usually based on the eligible population, alert level, utilization rate or vaccine consumption rate, and capacity of the LGU to store the vaccines.
In the data of the DOH, Eastern Visayas has already recorded a total of 65 Delta variant cases.
Majority of these cases are from Eastern Samar (27), Leyte (20), Samar (7), Tacloban City (5), Southern Leyte (4), and one in Biliran.
In Leyte province, cases are from Leyte town (8), Alangalang and Merida (2), Baybay City, Capoocan, Hilongos, Hindang, Kananga, Palo, Palompon, Tanauan (1).
In Eastern Samar, areas with Delta variants are Borongan City (12), Hernani (4), Can-avid (3), Guiuan and Taft (2), Arteche, Mercedes, San Julian, and Sulat (1).
In Samar, three in Zumarraga, and one each in Calbayog City, Daram, Hinabangan, and Basey.
In Southern Leyte, cases are in Maasin City (2), Saint Bernard and Tomas Oppus (1).
Both the provinces of Biliran (Kawayan) and Northern Samar (Mapanas) have one each Delta variant confirmed cases.
On the vaccination roll-out in the region, a total of 974,470 of the 1,314, 560 vaccine allocated in the region had been administered to eligible population.
Of the inoculated individuals, 463,742 are fully vaccinated while 510,728 had received their first dose.
(ROEL T. AMAZONA)

TACLOBAN CITY- The Commission on Elections (Comelec) in the region has called on qualified voters to visit their respective elections offices to register as the listing up is to end next week.
Lawyer Felicisimo Embalsado, assistant regional director, said that to accommodate possible rush of registrants with the deadline nearing, the Comelec has extended the registration time from 8 am until 7 pm and from 8 am until 5 pm during weekends.
The registration is to end on September 30, a day before candidates seeking for national and local elective posts in next year’s elections are to file their certificates of candidacy.
“I am calling those who are qualified to register or those who will turn 18 years old on the day of the elections on May 9, 2022 or those who will be 18 years old before May 9, 2022 to register so that you can participate in the democratic processes of choosing our national and local leaders,” he said.
“There will be no extension because we are following a timeline,” Embalsado added.
In Congress, measures to move for another month of the registration is now pending.
Since the listing up started January of this year, 262,555 prospective voters have registered at their respective Comelec offices.
And of this number, 118,820 were new registrants. The rest were either for activation of their voter’s registration or transfer of their voting place.
In Tacloban City, an average of at least 200 registrants visit the Comelec office.
So far, over 6,500 have been enlisted at the city polling office. Tacloban City, at present, has 134,681 registered voters.
Eastern Visayas, composed of six provinces, is expected to have more than 3 million registered and qualified voters who are to troop to their polling precincts in next year’s elections.
(LIZBETH ANN A.ABELLA)