2 months to immunise priority groups
MANILA: The Department of Health (DOH) hopes to immunise all those in its five priority groups from Covid-19 within the next two months.
Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said this about the groups tagged by the department in Category A, according to the Philstar.com portal.
“We hope we can inoculate them by June or July,” she said in a radio interview.
Those under Category A are frontline healthcare workers (A1), senior citizens (A2), persons with comorbidities (A3), frontline essential workers (A4) and the indigent population (A5).
The Philippine government is targeting to vaccinate 70 million citizens by November or December, provided they get sufficient supply of vaccines.
“But we have to remember those are two doses, except the one by Janssen (producer of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine).
“All of them, even if we have a lot of supply (two doses), they are always divided by two,” she said, admitting that supply of vaccines can be an issue.
“(The number of those to be vaccinated) is not okay, in a sense that we want more. We are constrained by the number of doses we receive. And we must set aside some vaccines for the second dose,” she added.
Cabotaje said the Sinovac vaccines from China that had arrived were being used for the first dose while the next delivery would be allotted for the second dose.
“We will monitor that because there might also be a delay. The interval is 28 days. So we would like to reserve some vaccines for the second dose so that their vaccination is complete.”
Cabotaje said the number of those vaccinated was nearing two million.
Of the figure, 60 to 70 per cent were healthcare workers.
A number of health care workers have yet to get vaccinated, but Cabotaje said the DOH started vaccination for the A2 and A3 groups because of the surge in cases in the National Capital Region Plus area, which includes Metro Manila, and the provinces of Rizal, Bulacan, Cavite and Laguna.
The country has obtained 3,525,600 vaccine doses up to April 27.