MANILA, Philippines (Updated 10:46 a.m.) — The Philippines finally kicked off its long-anticipated COVID-19 inoculation drive, which has been delayed for weeks, on Monday, with medical workers and government officials leading the country’s pandemic response among the first in the queue to receive the coveted shots.
The first dose of CoronaVac, the vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech, was given to University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital Director Gerardo Legaspi during a “symbolic” vaccination activity. He was the first one to receive an authorized COVID-19 shot in the country.
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Food and Drug Administration Director General Eric Domingo, testing czar Vince Dizon and Metro Manila Development Authority chair Benjamin Abalos Jr. were also inoculated with the Sinovac vaccine.
The rollout came as the country saw the highest number of daily new infections in over four months. More than 576,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported, including over 12,000 deaths.
Aside from PGH, it will be administered to health workers at the Lung Center of the Philippines, Dr. Jose N. Rodriguez Memorial Medical Center and Sanitarium, Veterans Memorial Medical Center, Philippine National Police General Hospital and Victoriano Luna Medical Center.
The 600,000 doses of Sinovac arrived in the country Sunday. These are a donation from the Chinese government. Military personnel are also set to receive 100,000 doses.
Last year, members of the Presidential Security Group and several government officials jumped the vaccination line and used smuggled vaccines developed by China’s state-owned pharmaceutical firm Sinopharm in an unauthorized inoculation activity that surprised health authorities.
‘Doses of hope’
FDA approved the CoronaVac for emergency use a week ago but did not recommend the Chinese-made vaccine to medical frontliners due to a lower efficacy rate reported among the group. It cited results from late-stage trials in Brazil involving health workers exposed to COVID-19 that yielded only a 50.4% efficacy rate.
But the health department stressed that the same Brazil study found the vaccine is 100% effective in staving off moderate to severe cases. It was also found to have efficacy rates of 65.3% and 91.25% in trials held in Indonesia and Turkey, respectively.
Experts part of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group approved the Sinovac jab to be offered to those willing to take it, reiterating is safe and effective.
But many health workers are reluctant and have decided to wait for other vaccines. They were given assurance that they will not lose their spot in the government’s priority list should they refuse to get vaccinated with CoronaVac.
Unlike competitor vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, Sinovac has yet to submit critical Phase 3 clinical trial data to medical journals for peer review.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. called the donated Sinovac shots “doses of hope” as he called on Filipinos to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Philippines is aiming to vaccinate 70 million people this year alone. But due to the shortage of supplies, the “major rollout” will only begin in the third quarter at the earliest.
The arrival of around 525,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine, distributed through the COVAX facility, was supposed to be on Monday but will be delayed for a week due to “global supply problem.”
The government faces the difficult task of conducting a massive inoculation program against COVID-19 following the botched rollout of Dengvaxia. This was highly-politicized despite unfounded claims that the vaccine caused the deaths of children inoculated with it during the previous administration.
Recent surveys show that only that almost half of the population are not inclined to get inoculated against COVID-19. The OCTA Research Group survey released last week found only 19% of adult Filipinos are willing to receive COVID-19 vaccines, while a January Pulse Asia survey showed only 32% want to get vaccinated.