MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines will soon stop administering monovalent COVID vaccines once stocks are fully consumed, according to the Department of Health (DOH).
“Based on our inventory, there are only less than 200,000 monovalent vaccines and these are only available in Calabarzon. The other local government units in the different regions already ran out of monovalent vaccines,” DOH Undersecretary Eric Tayag said at a press conference on Tuesday.
“If there will be a recommendation that bivalent vaccines can be used as substitute to the monovalent vaccines, that is one possibility – though most of the country’s bivalent jabs have also been consumed,” he added, noting that there are no plans to procure monovalent vaccines.
Based on the DOH’s latest data as of Sept. 1, 92.37 percent or 359,318 out of 388,980 allocated bivalent vaccines have been administered.