CARRY ON A senior health worker at Ospital ng Maynila is inoculated with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Some 200 medical workers in the hospital will also be vaccinated. The AstraZeneca jab makes up almost all of the vaccines being distributed and they are from the COVAX global vaccine pool. —MARIANNE BERMUDEZ
CEBU CITY, Philippines – The COVID-19 vaccine rollout for senior citizens and individuals with comorbidities in Central Visayas is now in limbo.
Dr. Mary Jean Loreche, spokesperson of Department of Health in Central Visayas (DOH-7), said in a virtual briefer on April 5 that the schedule for the vaccine rollout for the region’s elderlies and persons with comorbidities has not been finalized.
Loreche, in a follow-up message sent to reporters, confirmed that the depleted supply of AztraZeneca vaccines in the country also affected their plans to already administer free vaccines to the subgroups.
“We have problems with AstraZeneca supplies (and we are) waiting for FDA (Food and Drugs Administration) and HTAC (Health Technology Assessment Council) to review the Sinovac data on safety for seniors,” said Loreche.
She said they are also waiting for further advisories from the national government on the need to send additional supply of COVID-19 vaccines here.
“In the meantime, we are urging LGUs (local government units) to continue their masterlisting for individuals qualified under A2 and A3,” Loreche said in Cebuano.
Health officials in Central Visayas are targeting to start administering senior citizens here with their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine by mid-April.
In addition, the national government initially planned to rollout the vaccines for A2 and A3 subgroups simultaneously.
Doctors and nurses start receiving their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines on March 9, 2021 at the Perpetual Succour Hospital during the the simultaneous vaccine rollout among private hospitals in Metro Cebu. | via Morexette Marie Erram
Under the Philippine National Deployment and Vaccination Plan for COVID-19 vaccines, medical frontline health workers, tagged as A1, are the priority in receiving the free vaccines.
They are followed by senior citizens under A2 and persons with co-morbidities under A3.
No more AZ
On April 15, the central office of DOH announced that the country has run out of AstraZeneca vaccines.
Around 500,000 doses of vaccines manufactured by the British-Swedish drugmaker arrived in the Philippines through two shipments last March.
These were donations from European countries.
AstraZeneca earlier said its COVID-19 vaccine is 80 percent effective in preventing the disease among the elderly.
But for CoronaVac, Sinovac’s vaccine, the FDA only recommended its use for clinically healthy individuals aged 18 to 59 because of the higher efficacy rate among this age group.
At least 30,000 of AstraZeneca vaccines were allocated for Central Visayas.
As of April 4, Loreche said 28,600 doses of this vaccine brand have already been used.
“All AstraZeneca, and even Sinovac, delivered and sent to us have been allocated already. This meant that these cannot be allocated to another person or subgroup,” she added.
Central Visayas has received a total of 119,760 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, both from AstraZeneca and China’s Sinovac Biotech.
Of this number, data from the Visayas Vaccination Operation Center (VVOC) showed that 52, 615 has remained unused as of April 4.
The same VVOC report identified 130, 991 individuals in the region under A1, and are qualified to be inoculated against COVID-19.
But around 50 percent, or 65,664 of them, are yet to receive their first dose as of April 4. – with reports from INQUIRER.net
/ dcb