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.
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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