Sinovac and Astrazeneca vaccines to be rolled out in the Philippines

 3-March-2021 | Mutation of corona virus is inevitable since then. Covid19 shall become Seasonal flu when the new variants of virus were born based on the Filipino Nurse Julie and my cousin. We should just disinfect all the time and forever and we should have healthy lifestyle to live longer and fight any viruses. In addition, when we take appropriate vaccines, we would have so called herd immunity.

Few weeks ago, SInovac Vaccines have been donated by Chinese company to the Philippines. Sinovac company donated 600,000 doses of their covid vaccines on the 28th of Februrary, 2021.

The Chinese military plane carrying the donated vials called CoronaVac landed at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay City past 4 p.m. and was welcomed by several Cabinet members.

President Rodrigo Duterte also witnessed the historic event and inspected the crates containing the vials, the first-ever to arrive in the Philippines, during its ceremonial turnover to the Philippine government.

In his speech, Duterte thanked the Chinese government for the vaccine donation, confident that more batches of vaccines will be available at the earliest possible opportunity.

“I convey my sincere gratitude to the Chinese people and the government of China for this gesture of friendship and solidarity – the hallmark of Philippines-China partnership,” he said.

 

Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian said at least 100,000 of the total doses are donations made by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

"Despite the increasing domestic need for vaccines, China has decided to donate vaccines to the Philippines and more Chinese vaccines procured by the Philippine government will surely come soon as expected," he said. "I hope that the vaccines will help kick off the Philippines’ mass inoculation campaign to curb the pandemic and allow Filipinos to return to normal life at the earliest.”

 

After Sinovac vaccines, Astrazeneca has provided their own covid vaccines in the country last week.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Representative to the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe expressed optimism that the Philippines will receive the 44 million doses allocated by the COVAX Facility within the year with up to 9.2 million doses arriving within the first and second quarter.

The delivery date will start once the Philippine government fulfills the necessary arrangements needed by the COVAX facilities to ensure smooth vaccine rollout and other requirements of the vaccine manufacturers Pfizer BioNTech and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals.

“When all of those requirements are met and we believe that the Philippines is on track to do that, we are looking potentially at a maximum of 9.2 million doses coming through the COVAX facility by March or April of this year. We are optimistic that the remainder of the 44 million doses will come later on in the year,” Dr. Abeyasinghe said, adding that the Philippines will have access to up to 9.2 million AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in South Korea if it can maintain targeted manufacturing capacity. This comes on the heels of the announcement that the COVAX Facility will be able to deliver approximately 117,000 doses of Pfizer BioNTech within the second or third week of February.

“The goal of COVAX is to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world to minimize the impact of the pandemic, to save lives, and to facilitate quick economic recovery,” Dr. Abeyasinghe remarked.

The Philippines has been meeting its timetable in making ready the cold-chain facilities and its manpower. According to Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III, “We have been implementing immunization for decades already, and most of these vaccines that are forthcoming would be currently for logistical side 2 to 8 degrees. We already have these kinds of facilities and equipment. With these ultra-low freezers, we have end-to-end agreements with manufacturers where they will assist us from the time that the vaccines arrive here to the storage and the distribution.”

 


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