Government officials vaccinated against COVID-19 despite not being eligible for priority status would receive their second dose, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said those who got vaccinated should get the second dose to prevent wastage.
“Let's not call it priority but give them a second dose. We can't waste the vaccine that has already been given. The second dose still needs to be given,” she said in an online briefing.
Meanwhile, a joint committee in the House of Representatives on Tuesday adopted a resolution urging the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to establish a unified national contact tracing protocol to ensure a more effective health emergency data monitoring system in the country.
The House Committees on Health and on Information and Communications Technology, chaired by Quezon Rep. Angelina Tan and Tarlac Rep. Victor Yap, respectively, adopted House Resolution 1536 filed by Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.
Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Michael Salalima of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, and Rep. Tan were among the non-health workers who received a Sinovac jab last week.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that Malaya and Salalima took the Sinovac vaccine with the intention of boosting public confidence in vaccination and were prodded by hospital staff to get vaccinated.
Vergeire, meanwhile, reiterated her call for compliance to the vaccine prioritization list.
“These AstraZeneca vaccines are for healthcare workers and any breach in the protocol we are implementing might jeopardize the succeeding vaccines that will come from Covax,” she said.
“We beg you to follow our prioritization framework first. We will all have a vaccine in the coming months ahead,” she said.
More than 29,000 Filipinos have been vaccinated against COVID-19 using vaccines from Sinovac and AstraZeneca since the Philippines began its inoculation program on March 1, according to DOH data.
During a virtual hearing, members of the House committees threw their support behind Velasco’s resolution as they called on government agencies to get their act together and agree on a unified national contact tracing system for COVID-19.
In the resolution that he filed, Velasco underscored the need to strengthen the government’s contact tracing efforts using the most effective and safest system to further boost its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The House chief believes that an effective and safe contact tracing system would help control the spread of the virus that has already claimed more than 12,500 lives and infected more than half a million people nationwide.
In November last year, the IATF-EID issued a resolution designating StaySafe.ph as the government’s contract tracing application of choice, making its use mandatory in all national government agencies and instrumentalities and local government units (LGUs).
The task force also promoted the use of the app in all other private establishments, facilities, and offices.
However, some government agencies and private establishments use other contract tracing apps, resulting in confusion and data privacy concerns.
StaySafe.ph is currently being used by 8.5 million individuals, 700 LGUs and 184,000 establishments. But it was learned during the hearing that the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the Department of Health and the Department of Science and Technology have yet to adhere to the IATF-EID resolution.
Baguio City Mayor and contact tracing czar Benjamin Magalong expressed frustration over the delay in the full implementation of the IATF-EID resolution, saying “it’s about time the three agencies fix the matter.”
“The national government acknowledged contact tracing application StaySafe and I myself was really surprised that suddenly here comes different types of application endorsed by different agencies and we’re not even consulted about it,” lamented Magalong, who was among the resource persons invited by the joint panel.
Some House members also could not hide their disappointment over the failure of government agencies to agree on a single contact tracing system, thus severely affecting the government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.
“It was unfortunate that until now ay problema pa rin natin ang contact tracing,” said Nueva Ecija Rep. Estrellita Suansing.
Kabayan Rep. Ron Salo shared the same sentiment.
“I am a bit sad because we have been discussing contact tracing, and yet here we are with it — we have yet to come up with even one system.”
Contact tracing is the process of finding out who has recently been in close contact with a person infected with a virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and reaching out to those people to let them know they may have been exposed and guide them on what to do next, which may include self-isolating to prevent further spread of the virus.
Data shows that the Philippines is only able to identify at least seven contacts per coronavirus-infected person when the ideal contact tracing ratio should be 1:35 for urban areas and 1:30 for rural communities.
