Phase 1 of real world study on COVID-19 vaccines to be held in PGH

The local study on the real-world effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines will start off at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the project leader said Wednesday.

In a hearing of the House Committee on Health, Dr. Regina Berba from the University of the Philippines Manila said the study will be conducted in three phases.

The first phase will involve health workers in the PGH, a major COVID-19 referral center.

“We’re ready to start the Phase 1 very soon… We already received ethical approval to perform it at the PGH,” Berba said.

“The plan is to very carefully monitor these staff… and follow them very closely to see whether clinically they develop COVID-19 or not, plus we’re going to biobank their excess specimens to study the other parts of the immune system,” she added.

The second phase will be community-based while the third phase will involve all regions across the country.

The P115-million study will run from July 2021 to June 2022.

It aims to “estimate the real-world vaccine effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines used in the Philippines by immunogenicity and prevention of symptomatic COVID-19.”

The Department of Science and Technology earlier said the study will also answer questions on the effect of ethnicity of COVID-19 vaccines. 

The head of the Philippine Vaccine Expert Panel has said that all COVID-19 vaccines available locally perform better in real world conditions than in clinical trials. 

Health authorities have also made clear that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, with less than 1% of recipients reporting serious side effects, none of which have been found to be directly caused by the jab. 

Over 3.9 million individuals have been vaccinated in the Philippines as of May 30, still far from the government’s target of inoculating 58 million people in COVID-19 hotspots by November. —KBK, GMA News