Vaccination of health workers completed within a month — Palace
MANILA, Philippines — The inoculation of the Philippines' 1.4 million medical frontliners is expected to be completed within a month, Malacañang said Sunday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said more than five million COVID-19 jabs acquired through the COVAX facility would be delivered this month. The first batch will consist of 117,000 jabs that will benefit more than 50,000 health workers since two shots will be given per person. Another five million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine are also expected to arrive this month, Roque added.
"There's an estimate already (on how long the vaccination would take) but it will really be fast... We expect all priority frontliners, about 1.4 million, to receive vaccines because more than five million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive also within the month," Roque told radio station dzBB.
"We expect that within this week, for the entire month, the vaccines doses will arrive and at least the vaccination of all medical frontliners and immediate priorities will start. But definitely, it won't take longer than a month. We can finish (the inoculation of) all medical frontliners," he added.
Roque said the giving of COVID-19 vaccines is expected to start on February 15. Lists containing the names of medical frontliners have been prepared, he added.
The Interim National Immunization Technical Advisory Group recently released the list of priority population groups for vaccination. Frontline workers in health facilities, health professionals, and non-professionals like students, nursing aides, janitors, and barangay health workers make up the top priority group for vaccination. They are followed by senior citizens, persons with comorbidities or existing health problems, frontline personnel in essential sectors including uniformed personnel, and those in working sectors identified as essential by the government's pandemic task force during the enforcement of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).
The next to be inoculated are indigent population not included in the preceding categories, teachers and social workers, other government workers, other essential workers, socio-demographic groups at significantly higher risk other than senior citizens and indigenous people, overseas Filipino workers, other remaining workforce, and the rest of the Filipino population.
Roque revealed that there was a debate about the proposal to prioritize persons with health problems because of concerns that it may be used to cut through the line.
"I said let us trust our doctors who will issue certificate, that they will not lie. We have high respects for our doctors," the Palace spokesman said.
Roque said members of the media are considered workers in sectors identified as essential because they continued performing their functions even during the height of the lockdown. He noted that news outlets were among the entities allowed to operate while parts of the Philippines are under ECQ.
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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