BACOLOD CITY – Two nurses here tested positive for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), weeks after they were inoculated with Sinovac vaccines.
Dr. Chris Sorongon, deputy for medical data and analysis of the Emergency Operations Center-Task Force (EOC-TF), said the two nurses were assigned at the operating and emergency room of Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) here.
Sorongon said the two nurses tested positive during the hospital’s regular surveillance testing and contact tracing every two weeks.
One of them was asymptomatic while the other showed symptoms of COVID-19. Both of them were already transferred to the isolation facility, he said.
Sorongon said the nurses possibly acquired the virus outside CLMMRH, since the hospital is strictly implementing infection control.
About 85 percent of the hospital staff have been inoculated with Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines, according to CLMMRH.
Sorongon said there’s a chance that they can still be infected with COVID because one dose is not enough to give the body the ideal immune response, adding that two doses of vaccine just lower the severity of the effect of the virus in the body.
Sorongon said this is the first case that the EOC has recorded among the people who got vaccinated and still tested positive for COVID.
The two nurses were among the 4,122 medical frontliners here, who received their first doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines. (Glazyl Masculino)
