Moderna gets EUA for COVID-19 jab use on adolescents
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine drug regulators on Friday cleared Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 17 years old.
Director General Eric Domingo of the Food and Drug Administration told a government briefing they issued the amendment to Moderna's emergency use authorization today.
It came, he said, after a "thorough evaluation of our vaccine [and] regulatory experts."
The US manufacturer got its first EUA in the Philippines in May. By August, it sought to expand its emergency use to include the said age group.
Domingo said usual precautions should be followed in administering the Moderna jab.
But like other mRNA vaccines, he said recipients should also be monitored for "very rare" cases of myocarditis, or the inflammation of the muscle of the heart.
"Definitely with the Delta variant affecting a lot of children, our experts saw the benefit of using the vaccine outweighs the risk," he said.
Still no vaccinations for children
In total, the government is procuring 20 million Moderna doses under a deal inked early this year.
But half a year since inoculation efforts began, only a few doses of the jabs have been delivered.
Philstar.com research showed 4.29 million doses have been sent to the country, most as donation from the COVAX Facility at more than 3 million.
Some 888,000 were government-led procurement while 408,000 were by the by the private sector.
And despite the EUA, the Duterte administration has yet to open vaccinations for adolescents, citing still the limited number of supply.
Official figures on September 1 showed there are now 18.29% or 14.10 million Filipinos fully vaccinated for COVID-19. That's out of the goal of up to 70 million this year.
Some 25.93% or 20 million, meanwhile, have received their initial dose. Apart from Moderna, Pfizer has also received emergency use approval for its COVID-19 vaccine to adolescents.
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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