Philippine monitoring new COVID-19 strain in UK

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government is closely monitoring the developments related to the new strain of the coronavirus disease in the United Kingdom, which has not reached the country as of yesterday.

Dr. Jaime Montoya, director of the Philippine Council for Health Research and Development, who oversees the review of anti-COVID-19 vaccines and their clinical trials in the country, said the new strain has not yet entered the Philippines.

“Sa ngayon po, sa ating nalalaman, wala pa po dito sa atin yung variant na isa, yung sinasabing nasa UK na-identify sa southern part of England,” Montoya said during the Laging Handa program aired over state-run PTV-4 yesterday.

He said local authorities are monitoring if cases of the COVID variant would be reported. Montoya explained that COVID-19 has mutated as more and more people are infected.

President Duterte has barred travelers from the UK from entering the Philippines starting yesterday until Dec. 31 to keep out the new COVID-19 strain.

The fast-spreading variant has led to the introduction of tighter COVID restrictions in several countries, which have enforced travel bans from the UK.

As this developed, Montoya also said that the Philippines sees no problem over reports in a Brazilian newspaper which showed that that Sinovac vaccine is over 50 percent effective in late stage trials.

The Chinese firm also asked the Brazilian experts running the trials to wait for 15 days before publishing the result.

Asked if 50 percent efficacy is acceptable for this Chinese vaccine, Montoya said the 50 percent efficacy is acceptable.

“The 50 percent efficacy is acceptable because that is the minimum requirement set by the World Health Organization for a vaccine to be used by a country,” he said. “We have to also bear in mind that a vaccine efficacy may actually change – it may go up or it may go down as more and more people are using it when they are actually rolled out.”

As for the Sinovac vaccine, Montoya said the government will look into the official data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“We cannot make any conclusions as of now, pending that review,” he said.

Pressed further, Montoya said the government is still studying which groups will get priority once a vaccine becomes available in the country.

“If we are given a choice and we have to prioritize, of course definitely the vaccine efficacy that is higher would be the preferred vaccine. However, we have to bear in mind that we have to look at the data,” he added.

“We are talking here of the overall vaccine efficacy which if it is true, it’s at 50 percent but if we actually break them down into groups, maybe it is more effective in a particular group of people – maybe healthcare workers, maybe the elderly, maybe with those with co-existing morbidity so we have to look at them,” he said.

He said such study is needed “before we can actually make a decision.”

Montoya said the vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna are also being reviewed by the FDA.

“Well, if you are going to look at the emergency use authorization… we will use that as the reference point because before any vaccine can be used or made available in the Philippines, it has to either be approved or given an EUA by our FDA,” he said.

He noted that so far, the US FDA has given an EUA only to Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

If the three vaccines including Sinovac are approved eventually by the Philippine FDA, Montoya said then they would likely be first to be available in the country.

Once negotiations are successful for acquisition, Montoya expressed hope that the vaccines will be available by second quarter of 2021 once the EUAs are approved also by the second quarter of next year.

The Bureau of Immigration clarified yesterday that Filipinos from the UK are exempted from the temporary travel ban that the government has imposed on the country after a new strain of COVID-19 was discovered there. – Robertzon Ramirez, Rainier Allan Ronda