MANILA, Philippines — The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) chiefs Cabinet secretary Karlo Nograles and Health Secretary Francisco Duque III are willing to receive “whatever brand” of vaccine against COVID-19, aiming to boost confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy.
“Secretary Duque and I are willing to be vaccinated using any brand in front of anyone,” Nograles, co-chairman of the IATF that handles the country’s COVID-19 pandemic response, said in Filipino yesterday.
Duque, IATF chairman, added later, “I reiterate whatever vaccines are available, whether they are from China or Russia or US or the UK, wherever, I will have myself vaccinated with any one of them.”
Nograles and Duque visited Navotas City yesterday to inspect the city government’s COVID-19 vaccination plan.
But Nograles asserted that the vaccines would be assured safe and effective, as they would have to be evaluated by the DOH’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“We need to send the message that we have to increase the confidence level in the vaccine, whatever the brand… We have to push the message that they are safe and effective no matter what brand it is,” he said.
Duque also said he could not be vaccinated with two different kinds of vaccines for obvious reasons.
When someone gets inoculated with two different kinds of COVID-19 vaccines, it could create an “unnecessary problem” of finding out which of the two could cause adverse effects, he explained, pointing out that various units in the DOH would look into the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines and the side effects they could cause.
Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, member of the OCTA research group, previously suggested that President Duterte and other politicians should publicly receive COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the ones made in China.
Previously, the Navotas City government revealed that the majority or 64.1 percent of its residents – over 6,000 of them who joined the survey – would receive the COVID-19 vaccine depending on the brand.
The said respondents chose to receive vaccines made by Western drug firms like AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna, prompting the city government to order the said vaccines.
It has secured 100,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine through an agreement with the company and IATF, while it would order 20,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 5,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine.
It has also procured a bio-refrigerator, transport coolers and ultra-low temperature freezers which could store the Pfizer vaccine which requires a negative 70-degree Celsius storage temperature.
City mayor Toby Tiangco, who previously declared he was apprehensive about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine from a Chinese company that he had not heard of yet, maintained that the city government would offer whatever COVID-19 vaccine would be available and would let the residents choose.