Deployment of 600,000 Sinovac doses eyed within 1st week of March
MANILA, Philippines — The government is targeting to distribute 600,000 doses of the Sinovac Biotech vaccine to different hospitals nationwide within the first week of March, the country’s vaccine czar said Wednesday.
The country began vaccinations against COVID-19 Monday, just a day after it received donated jabs from China. So far, some 2,793 individuals got inoculated with CoronaVac in the 11 hospitals where the jabs were first deployed, Carlito Galvez Jr. said in an interview on ANC’s Headstart.
“Our target for the end of the week is to deploy almost 600,000… Our target for this week is to dispatch and distribute all doses to different regions,” Galvez said.
CoronaVac doses arrived in Cebu City and Davao City Tuesday, with the rollouts there expected to begin today.
The initial allocation set was for 202,182 individuals in Luzon, 51,140 for Visayas and 94,540 for Mindanao, Galvez said.
The vaccine czar also claimed that the demand for Sinovac vaccine is increasing.
“Initially, on the first day, only a few wanted to take it, only about 13% requested for it… Now, almost every day, congressmen and mayors who want hospitals in their localities to receive the vaccine are calling us,” he said in Filipino.
The government aims to vaccinate between 1.7 million and 2 million health workers by end-March. But it faces challenges not limited to the stock of coveted jabs but also reluctance of the public, including medical frontliners.
Rollout for general public
Galvez also said the vaccine rollout for the general public may start in late April, at the earliest.
The vaccination of senior citizens and indigent families—which are included in the government’s priority list—may also begin around the same period.
“Our projection for the general public as well as the senior citizens, poor families and vulnerable communities, we will start general public inoculations more or less late April or May,” he said.
The government is aiming to inoculate 70 million people—about 60% of the population—this year.
Galvez earlier said only 5.1 million of the 161 million doses expected this year will arrive in the country in the first quarter. The bulk of the doses will only come in the second half.
The Philippines has recorded 580,442 COVID-19 cases as of Tuesday after six consecutive days more logging over 2,000 additional infections. — Gaea Katreena Cabico
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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