No booster shot plans for health workers vaccinated with Sinovac –Palace

Malacañang said Monday that the government would not be giving booster shots to health workers who were fully vaccinated with two doses of the Chinese COVID-19 vaccine Sinovac.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque made the response given the report that 618 medical workers in Thailand got infected with COVID-19 even if they were fully vaccinated with Sinovac

"No such initiative [to give a booster shot to health workers fully vaccinated with Sinovac] so far. What I do know is a post of Dr. Edsel Salvaña and you know, he actually condemned the headline that hundreds of Thai medical workers infected despite Sinovac vaccinations because the report actually said only 618 out of 677,348 who received two doses of Sinovac were afflicted with the disease," Roque said.

Roque further quoted Salvaña who said "On the newspaper, do a better job of objective reporting. You guys are killing vaccine confidence that will cost lives. What’s the vaccine effectiveness for those numbers was infection rate and death rate among unvaccinated. You guys can do better than that; we expect better. The vaccines are working very well.”

Based on the Philippine Food and Drug Administration's evaluation, the efficacy rate of Sinovac on health workers was 51%.

Zamora revelations

Also on Monday, San Juan lawmaker Ronaldo Zamora admitted that was inoculated with two "bootleg" Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine doses in December last year or two months before the COVID-19 vaccination program started last March 1.

Zamora also revealed that he received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech as a booster since he is immunocompromised, having undergone a quadruple heart bypass and a kidney transplant during the last two decades.

Roque, however, maintained that the government had no policy for mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines.

"That is not a policy as it is still under study," Roque said.

Roque, however, argued that Zamora's action of getting four doses of COVID-19 vaccines from two different brands is not a case of mixing and matching.

"I don’t think this qualifies as mixing because he had two doses of one and then two doses later," he added.

Health workers are the top priority under the government's vaccination program. — DVM, GMA News