The government is set to sign today an agreement with US biotech company Novavax for 30 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, Malacanang said Tuesday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque gave assurances the country would get the vaccines as the government would sign the agreement Wednesday, March 10.
National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. is scheduled to fly to India on Tuesday next week and will remain there until Friday to secure agreements with Novavax and the Serum Institute of India (SII).
Novavax has not yet received authorization for emergency use from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration.
Around 44,000 doses of vaccines have already been administered by the government since the immunization drive started March 1, Galvez Jr said in a report to the President on Monday night.
The vaccine recipients are mostly health frontliners, in line with the government’s list of priority groups. A few government officials received the COVID-19 jabs during the vaccine rollout last week.
The World Health Organization expressed Tuesday optimism that the COVID-19 vaccine supply from the COVAX Facility, of which it is a member, might be able to inoculate 20 percent of the Philippine population before the year ends.
In a related development, the working class and those belonging to vaccination subgroup B can expect to be inoculated by the third quarter, as soon as most of the pre-ordered COVID-19 vaccines arrive, said Cabinet Secretary and Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) co-chairman Karlo Nograles.
During the virtual Pandesal Forum by Kamuning Bakery and Cafe Tuesday, Nograles said the arrival and supply of the vaccines would determine has fast vaccination efforts move from one sub-group to the next.
Currently, subgroup A or the medical frontliners are on the receiving end.
“So as soon as the vaccines are delivered and depending on how much they deliver, that will spell out or make a difference in terms of how fast we move from one subgroup to the next,” he said.
He said all subgroups would get their chance to be vaccinated within the current year.
However, the business sector, especially the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (FCCCII), said entrepreneurs like them were already on their “last mile” and might not be able to go further than six months at most.
“We are on our last stretch and if we do it for another one year or six months more of us will be closing our businesses,” said FCCCII president Henry Lim.
He added his group had also appealed to increase the upper limit threshold for the priority sector to include senior citizens who are also entrepreneurs to be able to deliver their contribution in paving for a faster recovery for the economy.
The FCCCII, Lim said, has placed an order for 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine, and plans to have them delivered as soon as they sign the tripartite agreement with the government.
President Rodrigo Duterte was thankful no one has died among Filipinos receiving COVID-19 vaccines slo far.
“On March 1, the vaccines were unloaded from a military plane from China. So what to do? The next day, the vaccination started. With the Lord’s mercy, no one has died, and many are already okay,” Duterte said during a televised address aired on state television Monday.
Duterte admitted that some people who got the jab experienced a headache and slight fever.
“That’s it but that’s part of the territory of the effects of the vaccine. It’s really there because it’s a foreign matter. When a foreign matter is injected into your body, there will really be a reaction,” he said.
So far, the country has about 1.25 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines– 600,000 of Sinovac and 525,000 doses of AstraZeneca. The government has also approved the importation of an additional 1 million doses of Sinovac, and China also promised to donate another 400,000 doses of Sinovac.
“We will effectively have 2 million doses of Sinovac because there's already 1 million donated by China. Then we have AstraZeneca. That will bring the total to more than 2.5 million doses,” Nograles said.
During a briefing with the Department of Health, WHO Country Representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe said that having a single-dose vaccine may make it easier for the vaccine-sharing initiative to cover more people.
“You may be aware that now there is potentially a candidate vaccine which is single dose,” Abeyasinghe said.
He was referring to the COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical company Janssen.
“WHO of course has not granted an EUL (emergency use listing) for this vaccine… If WHO grants an EUL and the COVAX can come to an agreement with the manufacturer, we are potentially looking at that vaccine also joining the COVAX portfolio,” Abeyasinghe also said.
“It should mean that people receiving that vaccine will need only one shot. They will not need to inject two shots. And so, we are optimistic that we will be able, through the COVAX, to provide vaccines to protect 20 percent of the Philippine population during this year,” he said.
The DOH earlier said it would be operationally easier for the Philippines to deploy Janssen’s single-dose vaccine.
Meanwhile, Dr. Nikka Hao of the DOH’s Disease Prevention and Protection Bureau also said “while there is vaccine hesitancy, there is also vaccine eagerness across the country.”
COVID-19 cases in the Philippines breached 600,000 on Tuesday, with Metro Manila recently registering a spike in infections amid relaxed restrictions and what experts view as complacency by many.
The government aims to inoculate 70 million to achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus.
At the same time, Galvez said the Philippines planned to get more than 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the second quarter, April, May, or June, of 2021.
In a pre-recorded briefing with President Duterte in Malacanang,
Galvez said these 20 million doses would come from Sinovac BioTech, the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility, Novovax, and AstraZeneca.
Galvez did not give other details of the number of doses for each brand.
The 2.6 million doses of AstraZeneca ordered by the private sector might arrive in May or June, Galvez said.
The government started mass vaccination among health frontliners last March 4 in Cagayan de Oro City, Vicente Sotto Memorial Hospital in Cebu City, and Southern Philippines Medical Center in Davao City.
Mass inoculation was also conducted in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) using Sinovac vaccine, he reported, adding similar rollouts were done in different civilian hospitals including Makati Medical Center.