Sinovac jabs arriving Sunday
Some 600,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines developed by Sinovac of China will arrive on Sunday, the Chinese embassy announced yesterday.
“It is a fine tradition between China and the Philippines to help each other in trying times. A friend in need is a friend indeed,” Ambassador Huang Xilian said,
referring to China’s donating the vaccine doses to the Philippines.
He expressed hope the arrival of the vaccines from China would kick off the Philippines’ nationwide inoculation program.
A Chinese military transport plane will deliver the cargo of CoronaVac doses at the Villamor Air Base, according to a retired Filipino-Chinese official who requested anonymity.
Sinovac general manager Helen Yang has confirmed the arrival this week of the vaccines now allowed for local application by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) through an emergency use authorization (EUA).
“After we have the EUA issuance, we cleared everything from the approval side and now we need to complete the schedule of delivery and custom procedures that would normally take a few days,” she explained.
Yang has also said Sinovac is “in close communication” with the Chinese embassy regarding the delivery of the vaccines.
Upon their arrival, the vaccine doses would be loaded onto refrigerated vans – after undergoing customs procedures – and transported to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City.
Despite the confirmation of the date of the vaccines’ arrival, the Department of Health (DOH) and the National Task Force against COVID-19 (NTF) said a vaccine rollout is still being finalized.
“Specific details as to the allocation and subsequent rollout of the 600,000 donated Sinovac doses are still being evaluated pending the official recommendation of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) and its approval by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF),” a joint DOH-NTF statement read.
“Details of the planned arrival ceremony are still currently being finalized in close coordination with the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China,” the NTF said.
Yesterday, DOH reported that confirmed COVID cases nationwide jumped to 568,680 with the addition of 2,269 cases.
Out of the total cases, DOH said 92.2 percent or 524,042 have survived the infection, including 738 additional recoveries.
Active cases stand at 32,437, accounting for 5.7 percent of total cases. The bulk or 94.5 percent of the active cases are mild and asymptomatic.
With additional 72 deaths, COVID-related fatalities rose to 12,201. The figure represents 2.15 percent of total cases.
Health workers’ turn
Anti-COVID task force chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. said he hopes the arrival on Sunday of the vaccines would make possible the inoculation of medical frontliners by the first week of March.
He confirmed a Chinese military aircraft would deliver the vaccines.
Galvez also noted that some mayors, including Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, have volunteered to be vaccinated with Sinovac in public to boost the people’s confidence in the vaccine.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said 100,000 of the 600,000 doses scheduled to arrive on Sunday would be administered to soldiers and policemen.
It was not clear whether President Duterte would push through with plans to personally welcome the shipment of vaccines at the airport.
Roque could not tell the actual date of inoculation of medical frontliners but has told Philippine General Hospital chief Dr. Gap Legaspi that there might be a need to prepare those who have consented to get inoculated by Monday.