Understanding the national vaccination plan

The national vaccination plan remains unclear. Even at this stage, most are unaware as to who are eligible for vaccination, when they can get it, which vaccines are to be used and if they are free. We also wonder about the state of government’s logistics chain and its readiness to handle temperature-sensitive serums.

In the last 30 days, vaccination czar Carlito Galvez Jr., Harry Roque and DOH Secretary Francisco Duque have been making the rounds of media channels describing bits and pieces of the plan. It has been confusing, to say the least. To get a more coherent picture, I pieced together the statements of the DOH, the Office of the President, the IATF as well as the information on their respective websites. This is what I found out:

The overarching objective of the plan is to vaccinate between 50 to 70 million Filipinos within the year or the equivalent of 60 percent of the population. This will be enough to achieve herd immunity.

For this year, government has arranged to import 148 million vaccines from seven suppliers including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax, Sinovac, Gamaleya and Johnson & Johnson. Each person requires two jabs so this inventory is only enough for 70 million Filipinos. Term sheets have already been signed with five out of the seven vaccine makers, which means they are now committed to meet our orders.

Arriving any day now are 117,000 doses of Pfizer-made vaccines care of COVAX. COVAX is a global initiative aimed to grant equitable access of vaccines to less affluent countries. The Pfizer variant is the first and only vaccine that has so far obtained an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration. Vaccines from AstraZeneca and Sinovac are scheduled to arrive next month. The AstraZeneca variant will likely be the second vaccine to secure an EUA with Sinovac, the third. It is estimated that most, if not all, of the seven vaccine makers will receive their EUA by the third quarter.

The first batch of vaccines will be stored at the Philippine General Hospital, the Lung Center of the Philippines, the East Avenue Medical Center and Dr. Jose Rodriguez Memorial Hospital. These health care facilities have been at the epicenter of COVID care and will be used as hubs for the inoculation of the first 50,000 health care workers engaged in direct treatment of COVID patients. They are the first priority.

Government expects to receive 10 to 15 million doses of vaccines on top of 9.2 million AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX in the second quarter. This will be used to inoculate the next priority cluster which consists of senior citizens, indigents and members of the Armed Forces, the Philippine National Police and the Bureau of Fire Protection.

The vaccine roll-out will go on full throttle by the third quarter when 30 to 50 million vaccines from the seven manufacturers arrive. These vaccines will be made available to the next priority cluster which includes teachers; social workers; government workers; essential workers from the agriculture, tourism, transport and food manufacturing sectors; people with disabilities; people living in dense areas; overseas Filipino workers; seafarers and the rest of the workforce.

The fourth quarter will be spent catching up on the goal of inoculating 60 percent of the population, in case it had not yet been attained.

This will be government’s largest and most ambitious vaccination campaign in history. If it succeeds, it will prove the UK-based Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) wrong since it announced  that the Philippines will only achieve vaccination for 60 percent of its population by the fourth quarter of 2023.

As for the logistics chain, at least 4,512 vaccination centers will be established across the country to which all vaccines must be delivered without breaching their temperature requirements. To achieve this, government will utilize its own facilities and that of third-party logistics suppliers for the storage and transport of serums.

Most vaccine types require maintaining a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius. Others require a temperature of -15 to -25 degrees Celsius. The Pfizer-made vaccine, however, requires an ultra-low maintaining temperature of -70 degrees Celsius.

Vaccines that require a maintaining temperature of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and -15 to -25 degrees Celsius will be handled in the same manner. They will be stored at the temperature-controlled warehouse of the Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) as well as third-party warehouses contracted by the DOH. From there, they will be transported to government’s 17 health centers across the country which will serve as regional storage hubs. These hubs are already rigged with cold storage facilities since they are where vaccines for measles and polio are stored. From there, the serums will be transported to the vaccination centers using reefer trucks.

As for the storage of Pfizer-made vaccines, government is procuring ten ultra-low freezers which will be based in the RITM facility in Alabang. This will be augmented by frigid warehousing facilities care of third-party suppliers. These suppliers include Royal Cargo, Maersk, Metro Pacific and Zuellig. From the frigid warehouses, the vaccines will be deployed directly to the vaccination centers in temperature controlled transport vehicles.

Will vaccination be free for all? The DOH website says it is free for all “priority groups.” However, it does not specify which among the many priority groups are included. It does say this: “The government is continuing negotiations to ensure adequate vaccine supply for all Filipinos, including those not in the priority groups.” I take this to mean that all medical frontliners, government employees, indigents and people with disabilities will get their vaccination free of charge. The rest of us will have to pay unless government has surplus stocks or a sponsor emerges.

Note, the above refers to the plan of the national government, not the individual plans of certain LGUs embarking on their own vaccination campaigns or that of private corporations.

Back to the national plan, citizens who want to be vaccinated must register with their local government units, some of whom have online portals. The DOH will use this as the basis for its master list. Those that register and make it to the priority list will receive an email or text from the DOH specifying the date, time and place of vaccination. A QR code will also be provided to track your vaccination schedule.

Government’s vaccination plan seems doable, albeit ambitious, timeline-wise. Let’s hope that mitigating factors like vaccine supply shortages do not get in the way.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aj_masigan