FDA chief: COVID-19 vaccinations prevented over 14,000 cases, 252 deaths

The Philippines prevented an additional 14,456 COVID-19 infections and 252 deaths because over 5.7 million people were given at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, Food and Drug Administration Director General Eric Domingo said Wednesday.

Domingo said that based on the country’s daily attack rate of 5.9 cases per 100,000 population and case fatality rate of 1.74%, 9,250 cases would have been recorded and 160 of them could have died if the 3,732,850 million people who received a first dose of the Sinovac vaccine had rejected it instead.

Furthermore, Domingo said, 5,296 would have gotten sick with COVID-19, of whom 92 would have died, if the 2,137,328 million people who got the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine has decided against it.

Domingo did not have a computation for other available COVID-19 vaccine brands in the country, Sputnik V and Pfizer-BioNTech, whose supplies are smaller than Sinovac and AstraZeneca.

"Ito po, personal computation ko lang po ito. Nine thousand [sa Sinovac]...i-compare natin siya doon sa 200 na nagkaroon ng COVID-19 after the first dose ng Sinovac at saka 33 after the second dose ng Sinovac, eh makikita naman po natin ‘no, may mga na-prevent po talaga at napakaraming nape-prevent na COVID-19 cases nito and especially po iyong mga death ‘no," Domingo said during the Laging Handa forum.

(This is a personal computation. Compare the over 9,000 people that could have fallen ill to COVID-19 to the 200 people who got COVID-19 after getting the first dose of Sinovac and 33 after the second  dose. We can see that vaccines really prevent COVID-19 cases and especially, deaths.)

"[This drastic reduction is] similar to AstraZeneca. If you will ask me if vaccines prevent transmission of the virus, yes, it does," Domingo added in mixed Filipino and English.

Given the figures, Domingo said, the public should complete their doses of vaccine against COVID-19 for outmost protection against severe COVID-19 and death due to COVID-19.

Domingo earlier said that only 68 people who completed their two doses of COVID-19 vaccine got infected with COVID-19, but all of these are mild cases and there were zero deaths registered after getting the vaccine.

He stressed that people should get their second dose of the two-dose vaccine as protection improves for fully vaccinated people.

"Our monitoring has shown that based on actual numbers, vaccines really work and we really should get vaccinated as soon as it is available in our community," Domingo added. — BM, GMA News