Focus on preventing severe COVID-19 amid presence of new variants — experts

Despite the detection of more transmissible coronavirus variants in the Philippines, the main focus must still be protecting the public against severe COVID-19 infection, two vaccine experts said Friday. 

Dr. Rontgene Solante of the Vaccine Expert Panel (VEP) urged Filipinos to “forget about the variant at this point in time [and] have yourself vaccinated” since studies have shown that vaccines still offer protection against new variants.

“I’m not concerned about the variants of concern at this point in time. The most important [thing] really is protecting the individual [from] going into severe form of the infection,” he said in a Health Department forum.

The Food and Drug Administration earlier assured the public that COVID-19 vaccines are still effective even against new coronavirus variants. 

The VEP members also explained that it is “normal” for some vaccines to see a bigger reduction in efficacy against variants compared to other jabs.

“When we talk about general efficacy, you will see some variability,” Dr. Isagani Padolina said in a mix of English and Filipino.

“But when you look at the endpoint... which is prevention of severe COVID-19, you will see that that variability really goes down because that’s the endpoint that we should focus on even with the different variants, the different vaccines,” he added.

Solante also said reports of COVID-19 case spikes in countries where the majority of the population received a Chinese-made vaccine need further study, since the infections may only be mild and not severe.

“For those fully vaccinated, you still have to observe the minimum health protocols until such time everybody is vaccinated,” he said.

The Philippines has inoculated more than 6.2 million people as of June 20, still far from the government’s target of vaccinating 50 million to 70 million individuals this year. — RSJ, GMA News