Cebu hospital chief: Over 1,200 health workers agreed to get Sinovac vaccine

More than 1,200 health workers of the Vicente Sotto Medical Center (VSMC) in Cebu City are set to get a Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine jab, its hospital chief said Thursday.

VSMC medical chief Dr. Gerardo Aquino made the announcement on the same day that the hospital received 7,200 doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine donated by the Chinese government.

“May 1,246 na nag-consent, at tumataas pa rin ‘yan. The other day, it was only 700 of us,” Aquino said during the Laging Handa briefing.

Aquino said that the COVID-19 vaccination of the hospital’s health workers will take six to seven days, and that there will be two hospitals on standby which can use the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines in the event VSMC won’t be able to use them all.

Aquino said he will get vaccinated with Sinovac himself.

“Ako mismo magpapabakuna, to show to my staff na wala kaming dapat katakutan and how important it is to have the vaccine,” he said.

The government started its COVID-19 mass vaccination program last March 1, a day after 600,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine donated by the Chinese government arrived.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued emergency use authorization to Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Sinovac. Of the three, only Sinovac is yet to get a positive recommendation from the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC).

Likewise, the Philippine FDA did not recommend Sinovac on health workers since its efficacy rate on this group only reached 50.4%. —KBK, GMA News