1M doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine paid for by gov’t arrive in Philippines

The one million doses of Chinese firm Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the country on Monday afternoon, making it the first vaccine supply paid for by the national government delivered to the Philippines.

The one million doses, which reached Villamor Air Base around 5 p.m., were just the first batch of the 25 million doses of CoronaVac that the Philippine government procured.

President Duterte checks out Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine @gmanews pic.twitter.com/75DZrA1WOX

— Llanesca T. Panti (@llanescajourno) March 29, 2021

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque earlier said that the one million doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine are worth P700 million.

Based on Philippine Food and Drug Administration’s evaluation, Sinovac has an efficacy rate of 65.3% to 91.2% on healthy individuals aged 18 to 59 years old.

Sinovac’s efficacy rate, however, only reached 50.4% among health workers with COVID-19 exposure, prompting the FDA not to recommend it for health workers.

The National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG), however, ultimately agreed to administer Sinovac to health workers because it is 100% effective in preventing severe COVID-19 symptoms.

President Rodrigo Duterte also earlier approved the use of  one million doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines paid for by the government for the use of health workers deployed in areas with high number of COVID-19 cases namely:

•     Metro Manila
•     Bulacan
•     Cavite
•     Laguna
•     Rizal
•     Cebu City and
•     Davao City.

Prior to the one million doses of CoronaVac delivered today, the Philippines received one million doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by the Chinese government and 525,600 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from global aid initiative COVAX facility.

Over 600,000 health workers—the first in line in the COVID-19 vaccination program—have been inoculated so far.—AOL, GMA News