Strictly follow COVID-19 priority list, Manila told

MANILA: An official of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday urged the government to follow strictly the top priority list for recipients of the COVID-19 vaccines so as not to “jeopardise” the country’s share in the rollout of vaccines through the facility called Covax.

Dr Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the WHO representative to the Philippines, explained the country should be able to demonstrate it could roll out the vaccine shots with a minimum of wastage and “respect” the priority list of recipients recommended by WHO.

“If we cannot demonstrate that we are following the prioritisation, unfortunately, no Covax and we may have to consider other options where the impact of the vaccine rollout will be more useful and practical and will continue to save more lives,” Abeyasinghe told an online media briefing.

Covax is a global vaccine-sharing scheme initiated by WHO to ensure equitable access to the coronavirus vaccines particularly for low-income and middle-income countries like the Philippines.

Earlier, Malacanang Palace announced that 487,000 doses of Astrazeneca vaccine are scheduled to arrive on Thursday night in Manila as part of the Philippines share through the Covax facility.

Those high in the country’s priority list are frontline healthcare workers like nurses and doctors as well as the elderly or senior citizens and people with comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension.

But even before the official arrival of COVID-19 vaccines in the Philippines, President Duterte himself announced in January that members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) had received jabs last year from a vaccine smuggled into the Philippines reportedly from the Chinese drug manufacturer Sinopharm.

Newspaper columnist Ramon Tulfo, also the special presidential envoy to China, likewise revealed that last year, he and other ranking government officials like cabinet members received shots from the smuggled Sinopharm vaccine.