Herd immunity to COVID-19 is possible by the end of the year, if the vaccines that the government has negotiated to obtain arrive on time, the country's vaccine czar said Sunday.
In an interview with ABS-CBN's TeleRadyo, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said the government can inoculate 50 million to 70 million by the end of the year, within the vicinity of its target to vaccinate 70 million to 80 million adults to achieve herd immunity.
“In a best-case scenario, if we have enough supply and our negotiations are successful, by December we can inoculate 50 million to 70 million,” Galvez said in Filipino. “If there's a shortage of supply, the worst case scenario is we'll finish by the middle of 2022.”
He said so far, the country has signed term sheets with five drug companies for 108 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. This is on top of the 44 million doses the country will get from the COVAX Facility, a program launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) aimed at the equitable distribution of the vaccine.
“More or less we will have 152 million doses. If we divide it by two, we can vaccinate more than 75 million people,” he said.
The Palace, meanwhile, assured medical frontliners they would receive the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines this month.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque told radio dzBB that the 117,000 doses of vaccines from the COVAX Facility would be administered to 50,000 medical frontliners, who are first in the government's list of priorities for vaccination.
A second batch of 5 million doses from AstraZeneca will also cover medical frontliners, he said.
He said the vaccination of the medical frontliners would be completed in less than a month.
On Saturday, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said people 60 years and older should not be inoculated against COVID-19, even though they are on the government's priority list.
In a television interview with GMA, Duque also said health care workers in public hospitals are not required to get vaccinated, because inoculation is voluntary. Those who decline the vaccine must sign a consent form, hwever.
He added that those who decline a vaccine may wait until another brand arrives, but there is no certainty it will arrive.
Medical frontliners who decline vaccination will not be affected as long as they observe minimum public health standards by wearing masks and face shields and observing social distancing at work.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) released its list of priorities for vaccination, starting with health care workers and senior citizens.
The IATF resolution, however, also provides that exclusion criteria for each vaccine (i.e. possible contraindications such as severe allergic reactions) will be considered in the vaccination of the priority populations.
“We are not excluding senior citizens and those with co-morbidities including the immunodeficient. In fact, they are included among the priority groups to be vaccinated. However, due to their risk, they must first be clinically assessed before getting vaccinated,” Duque said.
“With the forthcoming vaccines from COVAX, we have to be strategic in distributing the limited supply of vaccines to ensure that we will maximize our resources and minimize potential losses,” he said.
The Health secretary also encouraged the priority groups to get the earliest available vaccines.
“Any amount of protection is better than cure, and we assure everyone that the vaccines that the government will roll out are safe and effective. So we encourage those in our frontlines and the most vulnerable groups to get vaccinated when presented with the opportunity under the immunization program. Vaccines work and have saved millions of lives,” Duque said.