THE country is expecting at least five million doses more of procured COVID-19 vaccines to arrive until the end of the month, according to the National Task Force against COVID-19 (NTF).
At least 14.66 million doses of both procured and donated vaccines have been delivered earlier this month, NTF chief and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. In a statement on Saturday.
Since February this year, the country has received about 48.52 million doses and has vaccinated almost 30 million doses as of August 20, including 13 million fully vaccinated individuals, or those who have completed two doses.
The government targets to vaccinate 50 million to 70 million Filipinos this year. It will mark its 30 millionth vaccination today in San Mateo City in Rizal.
Galvez said the 13 million fully vaccinated individuals make up about 18.4 percent of the “eligible population” or those aged 18 years and older
He said in Metro Manila, about 43.33 percent of the region’s eligible population is now fully vaccinated.
On the vaccines, Galvez said the remaining deliveries for the month include those bought from Pfizer (around 727,850 doses), Moderna (1.8 million doses), and Sinovac (one million). Also expected to be delivered are those bought by the private sector from Moderna and AstraZeneca, those coming from the global vaccine sharing scheme COVAX Facility, and the balance of the Chinese donation of Sinopharm vaccines.
Sinopharm delivered 739,200 doses last Friday.
Galvez said with the arrival of more vaccines, allocation for all regions will increase to enable local government units (LGUs) nationwide to raise their vaccination output.
He said the goal of national government is for the provinces and other regions to catch up with the vaccination output of Metro Manila, despite its focus on areas with rising cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19.
NTF spokesman Restituto Padilla, in a radio interview yesterday, said the national government has secured 170 million doses of vaccines which would be enough to cover the vaccination of the targeted eligible population while talks for the possible purchase of booster shots are ongoing.
Padilla also assured the public that contingencies are in place to ensure the quality of the vaccines, especially those that require special freezers with negative temperatures.
He made the statement following a blackout that affected several provinces in the Visayas last Friday. Authorities have said lightning struck the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines’ Cebu-Quiot-Colon line, which resulted in power interruptions in Cebu, Leyte, Samar, and Bohol provinces. Power was restored Saturday.
Padilla said some storage facilities have backup generators to ensure that the freezer temperature would not be affected by the power outages.
The Department of Health, in a statement, said the length of protection that vaccines give is still unknown as “long-term follow-up studies in the trials are still ongoing.”
“Participants of clinical trials are monitored for up to one to two years to generate the complete clinical trial results,” it also said.
The DOH also said all COVID-19 vaccines available now have given only an emergency use authorization (EUA).
“This means that they were given emergency approval based on the interim results of ongoing Phase III clinical trials which, in this state of a public health emergency, will suffice to apply for and be issued with an EUA,” it said.
The statement was issued amid reports quoting Vaccine Experts Panel chair Dr. Nina Gloriani as saying how long antibodies from the COVID-19 vaccines will last. What Gloriani discussed, DOH said, was on when antibodies from the vaccines start to decrease. — With Gerard Naval
