Two health experts urge public to consider getting Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine

Two medical experts on Tuesday urged the public to consider getting the coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese firm Sinovac amid doubts due to its lower efficacy rate.

Dr. Lulu Bravo, executive director of Philippine Foundation for Vaccination, said Filipinos should trust the experts behind the decision to grant emergency use authorization (EUA) to the Sinovac jab.

“It is not easy, I can tell you honestly, to have to make the decision, but these decisions are made by experts, by people who have pored [over] and looked at the data and this is what we have to trust our experts with,” she said in an interview on ANC.

“It is not just the vaccines, it is the policies that we make that must be trusted. It is easy to destroy a vaccine just because you heard this and heard that… But please, let us really look at what the experts are saying,” she added.

Bravo earlier said no protection is worse than partial protection amid questions surrounding the Sinovac vaccine, which showed 50.4% efficacy among health workers and 65.3% to 91.2% efficacy among healthy individuals aged 18 to 59. 

“The first vaccine that will be approved by FDA (Food and Drug Administration), that will be available to you, that is the best vaccine to get. You don’t want to wait,” she said.

Meanwhile, former government advisor Dr. Tony Leachon pointed out that the vaccine efficacy threshold set by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 50%.

“I would encourage essential workers and a lot of patients to go onto Sinovac because 50% efficacy rate is the threshold given by the WHO and, in the absence of the two first approved vaccines, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, we don’t have any choice considering we need to move really to perk up the economy,” he explained.

“So 'yung 50% na sinasabi natin, okay ‘yan kasi inaprubahan ng FDA at pinag-aralan ng Vaccine Expert Panel… Kung 18 to 59 [years old ka], trust the FDA, my dear fellow Filipinos.”

Malacañang earlier said that health workers and the elderly will not be the first to get COVID-19 vaccines, despite them being the top priorities in the government’s vaccination list, due to Sinovac’s lower efficacy rates for both groups. 

The government has been urged to speed up the procurement of vaccines that can be administered to health workers.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country rose to 563,456 on Monday. Of this number, 522,874 recovered while 12,094 died. —KG, GMA News