MANILA, Philippines (Updated 5:01 p.m.) — The country’s National Immunization Technical Advisory Group recommended the use of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech for health workers but said that medical frontliners can still opt not to receive the China-made jab.
In a briefing Friday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said members of the NITAG and the department’s Technical Advisory Group have concluded that the Sinovac vaccine, known as CoronaVac, is safe and will be “beneficial” to medical frontliners.
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NITAG is a group of experts responsible for providing independent, evidence-informed advice to policymakers on issues related to immunization and vaccines.
“The NITAG and TAG has deemed it sufficient to recommend the use of vaccine for healthcare workers as it bears to reiterate that our goal for prioritizing healthcare workers for vaccination is to reduce morbidity and mortality among their group, while they maintain the most critical essential health services,” she said.
The government’s inter-agency task force on pandemic response has already approved the recommendation of NITAG.
“This will be presented to the president,” Vergeire said.
FDA recommendation
The country’s Food and Drug Administration gave emergency approval Monday to CoronaVac— with the first doses set to arrive on Sunday—but did not recommend its use for health workers because they are constantly exposed to COVID-19 patients. The drug regulator later clarified that medical frontliners are not prohibited to receive the vaccine if they want to.
According to late stage trials in Brazil involving health workers who have had exposure to COVID-19 cases, the jabs yielded only a 50.4% efficacy rate.
Vergeire stressed the recommendation of the FDA was not a question of vaccine safety but a “question of rational use of available resources.”
The FDA said the vaccine can be given to “clinically healthy” adults aged 18 to 59 after it was found to have an efficacy rate of 65.3% in clinical trials held in Indonesia and 91.25% in the study conducted in Turkey.
Health workers’ choice
Health experts emphasized it is for the medical frontliners to decide whether they will take the Sinovac shot or not and that the prioritization framework will still be followed.
Health workers are at the top of the government’s priority list for vaccination.
“Vaccination with the incoming Sinovac donation is voluntary... If they are hesitant to accept this vaccine, then they can wait for the next available vaccine but we don’t know when that would be,” Dr. Nina Castillo-Carandang, NITAG member, said.
Dr. Edsel Salvana, member of the DOH TAG, said the vaccine “looks like it will save lives” and it is right to offer the available jab to the frontliners.
“If they feel this is not the right vaccine for them, then we are not going to penalize them. They are still first in line for either Pfizer or AstraZeneca,” he said.
The initial doses of 600,000—which are donated by vaccine—are expected to arrive in the country on Sunday.