COVID-19 frontliners elated as Sinovac jabs arrive in BARMM
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-COVID-19 frontliners in the Bangsamoro region were elated with the national government’s supply of 2,100 doses of Sinovac to protect them from the infectious disease, which has so far infected 584,667 in the country.
Physician Amirel Usman, acting health minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Friday the vaccines are intended for health workers and essential service providers in the forefront of BARMM’s war on COVID-19.
“Our frontliners are happy with this,” he said.
Usman and physician Zul Qarneyn Abas, also a senior official of the Ministry of Health-BARMM, led the medical team that fetched from the Maguindanao Airport the vaccines that arrived from Manila, brought in by a passenger plane.
Usman said the shipment consisted of 4,200 vials of Sinovac.
The 4,200 doses are for 2,100 anti-COVID-19 frontliners in the Bangsamoro region, who shall have two jabs each.
The MOH-BARMM and the Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence, or READI contingent, are working together in pushing the anti-coronavirus containment efforts of the Bangsamoro government forward.
“This shall be the initial stage of our vaccination program in the Bangsamoro region,” Usman said Thursday.
He said the vaccines that arrived Thursday are intended for 1,400 frontliners in Maguindanao, 972 in Lanao del Sur, 287 in Basilan, 1,032 in Sulu and 518 in Tawi-Tawi.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, BARMM’s local government minister, said Thursday the Bangsamoro leadership is thankful to the national government for supplying vaccines for 2,100 regional anti-COVID-19 frontliners.
“We are so thankful for this support,” Sinarimbo, also BARMM’s regional spokesperson, said.
Sinarimbo is overseeing the operation of READI that has teams of calamity and disaster response experts directly involved in BARMM’s anti-COVID-19 campaign.
A number of BARMM-READI personnel survived COVID-19 infections last year, apparently contracted while working in the field.
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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