Distribution of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to hospitals may begin Friday — official
MANILA, Philippines — The government may start deploying close to 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by British Swedish firm AstraZeneca and Oxford University to different hospitals nationwide late Friday, an official leading the country’s pandemic response said.
“Maybe the distribution of AstraZeneca vaccine to different hospitals will begin either later today or tomorrow,” Vince Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, said in an interview on Teleradyo.
In a separate interview on CNN Philippines, Dizon said the rollout of AstraZeneca jabs will “start immediately.”
After delays, some 487,200 doses of AstraZeneca obtained through the COVAX facility arrived in the Philippines Thursday night. The number of doses was lower than the 526,000 that the government expected to receive last Monday.
The Philippines is expected to receive 4.58 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from COVAX facility along with 117,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNtech.
Dizon, who is also the country’s testing czar, said hospitals that received donated Sinovac jabs will also receive AstraZeneca shots.
“They will also receive [AstraZeneca] because both will be rolled out simultaneously based on the order of the president so medical frontliners will have a choice,” he said.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. earlier said the government aims to vaccinate between 1.7 million and 2 million health workers by end-March. But it faces challenges not limited to the stock of the coveted jabs but also the reluctance of the public to get inoculated.
“So every vaccine that comes in, regardless of brand, would be for them. So hopefully by end of March or April, we could vaccinate all our healthcare workers,” Dizon said.
The government is eyeing to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine to elderly medical personnel. Sinovac, the only vaccine currently being rolled out, is only recommended by the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group for people aged between 18 and 59 years.
The World Health Organization stands by the use of AstraZeneca vaccine despite a preliminary study suggesting the jab offered less protection against the variant first seen in South Africa, its representative to the Philippines said Thursday. The country has so far detected six cases of B.1.351.
To date, the Philippines has recorded over 584,000 COVID-19 cases, including more than 12,000 deaths. — Gaea Katreena Cabico
The national government has so far secured two official deals for COVID-19 vaccine supplies in the Philippines, one with Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac and another with the Serum Institute of India.
Watch this space for bite-sized developments on the vaccines in the Philippines. (Main image by Markus Spiske via Unsplash)
Health Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire says the general population may now get their second booster jab.
"We're just waiting for the release of implementing guidelines, then we'll start rolling out our second booster for the general population," she says. — Gaea Katreena Cabico
Amid questions on vaccines being administered, the Department of Health assures the public all doses are safe and effective as the “process of extending shelf life goes through thorough stability studies.”
“The government ensures that every vaccine that is injected with an extended shelf life has gone through studies, and is still safe and effective against COVID-19,” it adds.
Government must increase vaccination capacity across the Philippines in anticipation of a surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant of the corona virus, Sen. Risa Hontiveros says.
She says local government units and the private sector can work together to put up more vaccination centers and deploy more vaccination teams to get more people inoculated against COVID-19.
"The active COVID cases have nearly doubled in three days. The positivity rate is almost four times the ceiling set by the World Health Organization. Huwag na nating hintayin na sobrang lumala pa ang sitwasyon bago tayo gumawa ng paraan para mapabilis ang ating pagbabakuna."
FDA chief Eric Domingo says that its agency has given emergency approval for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
The United States immunized around 900,000 children aged five-to-11 against Covid in the first week the Pfizer vaccine was authorized for them, a White House official says Wednesday.
Roughly 700,000 more have made appointments at pharmacies, White House Covid coordinator Jeff Zients tells reporters.
"The program is just getting up to full strength," he says, adding most of the shots were given in the last couple of days alone. — AFP
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