Vaccines in provinces to be returned to NCR

MANILA, Philippines — Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the government will take back all AstraZeneca vaccines that were already distributed to sites outside the National Capital Region to intensify the inoculation in the NCR, which is seeing a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases.

President Duterte has approved the use of all 525,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines – the entire initial batch from the World Health Organization COVAX Facility – for the country’s health care workers.

“Please be informed that the President has approved the request to utilize all on-hand COVAX-donated AstraZeneca vaccine doses as first dose vaccination in order to protect a larger number of frontline health care workers in areas witnessing increased transmission,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said yesterday.

“Because there is a surge of cases in NCR, especially in Quezon City, we want to vaccinate more people there and we will be using the second dose of AstraZeneca,” he pointed out.

The second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine is indicated to be given three months or 12 weeks after the first inoculation.

Duque said the vaccines to be recalled will come from areas where there has been a “low uptake” of the first doses and where the cases of COVID-19 is low. Another reason for taking it back is the vaccines’ expiry date on May 31, which presents a risk that the vaccines will expire before it will be used in those areas.

“We cannot waste even a single dose to expire. We have to deploy in NCR where almost more than half of COVID-19 cases are coming from...We also want to vaccinate the barangay health workers, airport personnel, laboratory workers and others who may have face-to-face encounters with cases,” he maintained.

National Task Force head and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. had backed Duque’s proposal during the Cabinet meeting, noting that WHO country representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe has also recommended to use the first shipment of 525,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines as first doses.

“I agree with Secretary Duque because we were already given a warning order by the COVAX Facility of WHO that another shipment of 979,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines are coming this March 22. If there will be delay, maybe it will arrive by the first week of April,” Galvez said.

He added that he would consult with the interim National Immunization Technical Advisory Group to determine if the vaccination program can be focused on high-risk areas, such as National Capital Region, Cebu and Region IX.

“We can do that in the next deployment… The arriving vaccines numbering 2.3 to four million could be concentrated in the affected areas,” Galvez opined.

Based on the data of the Department of Health (DOH), only 72,499 health workers received their first dose of AstraZeneca vaccines as of March 17.

Galvez said the recall move would initially result to the protection of about 825,000 health care workers, noting that the country is inoculating an average of 23,000 to 30,000 of them per day since early March. –  Sheila Crisostomo