Drilon urges Galvez to buy more effective COVID-19 vaccines for Filipinos

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Tuesday urged vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. to procure more effective and less expensive COVID-19 vaccines.

In a statement, Drilon said Filipinos should not be “shortchanged” and that the lives of Filipinos should bear no price tag.

“We can buy the most expensive vaccines with high efficacy. We should not short-change our taxpayers. But we are a fool to buy more expensive vaccines with doubtful efficacy,” Drilon said.

He cited the situation in other countries, particularly in Indonesia, where hundreds of healthcare workers inoculated with Chinese-made Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines were hit with COVID-19 and at least 14 fully vaccinated medical frontliners died.

“It is about time for Secretary Galvez to look at this objectively and listen to health experts. I have not heard any doctor or any member of the medical profession that recommends Sinovac over Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca. Bring me one, Secretary Galvez, aside from Health Secretary Francisco Duque III,” Drilon said.

“That is very alarming because as it appears now, Sinovac is the vaccine of choice by the government. We want to prevent the situation that is happening now in Indonesia. We are not promoting any brand. What we are saying is, Filipinos deserve the best vaccine, especially frontline doctors and nurses who are exposed to the virus,” the minority chief added.

Drilon further pointed out that these reports on Sinovac “do not augur well for a country that has high vaccine hesitancy.”

Although he understands that Sinovac was the brand that was immediately available to the Philippines while the early negotiations with Pfizer was dropped, Drilon said the government has better access now to other brands.

The government should now make a policy to prioritize the procurement and distribution of vaccines with high levels of efficacy, he said.

Drilon also claimed that the price of Pfizer is quite lower than Sinovac.

“That’s a basic logic: why choose a vaccine that is less effective yet more expensive over a vaccine that is more effective but less expensive?” Drilon asked.

The Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccine for emergency use in February this year. It was the vaccine used when the government officially rolled out its COVID-19 vaccination program in March.

Based on Philippine FDA evaluation,  Sinovac's efficacy rate is 65% to 91% for those aged 18 to 59. Its efficacy rate on health workers and elderly are at 50.4% and 51%, respectively.

In January, the FDA also approved the emergency use authorization (EUA) to the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech.

The FDA said interim data from the ongoing Phase 3 trial of Pfizer vaccine shows the vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95% in the study population and at least 92% among all racial groups.

On Monday, one million more doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines arrived in the Philippines, bringing the country's total supply of the vaccine brand to 12 million doses.

The Philippines has a total of 17,455,470 vaccine doses as of Monday, including those from Moderna, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Sputnik V. — BM, GMA News