Philippines eyes house-to-house COVID-19 vaccination for vulnerable Filipinos
MANILA, Philippines — The government is considering conducting house-to-house vaccination for vulnerable Filipinos who cannot to go to designated vaccination centers, the Department of Health said Monday.
During the House committee on health’s hearing on the government’s COVID-19 vaccination program, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque III said doing house-to-house inoculation is “possible.”
“This is part of the planning, especially for those who are very, very vulnerable and high-risk senior citizens,” Duque said in Filipino.
“If they will have difficulty going to vaccine sites, we will bring the vaccines to them,” he said.
But the health chief stressed that this is “more of an exception rather than the rule” because protocols on post immunization surveillance, monitoring and reporting of adverse events following vaccination must be followed.
In a Senate hearing last week, Duque said that 4,512 vaccination sites will be set up across the country. Each site aims to inoculate 300 people a day.
The Philippines is targeting to vaccinate 50 to 70 million Filipinos against COVID-19 this year alone, with the first shots expected to arrive as early as February. This target, however, depends on the availability of vaccine supplies, which had been mostly procured by wealthy nations.
The government also faces the critical task of storing shots and distributing them across the archipelago, as well as reestablishing public trust on vaccine after the highly politicized Dengvaxia controversy.
The country signed term sheets with Novavax for 30 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, AstraZeneca for 17 million doses and Sinovac for 25 million doses.
Only Pfizer has so far obtained emergency use authorization from the country’s Food and Drug Administration for its jab. Such approval is needed for any COVID-19 vaccine before it can be rolled out.
With over half a million COVID-19 cases and nearly 10,000 deaths, the Philippines has the second worst coronavirus outbreak in Southeast Asia.
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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