Philippine study on COVID-19 jabs' efficacy ongoing —expert

The Philippine study on the real-world effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines is already underway, its project leader said Wednesday.

In a forum hosted by Blueprint.PH, Dr. Regina Berba, infection control chief of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), said the study had already started in their facility.

“The Philippine government has also given us a grant to do the Philippine vaccine effectiveness project. So we started that already in PGH and we’ll be rolling that project out to several other places, cohorts, or sites in the Philippines,” she said.

Berba earlier explained that the first phase of the study would involve health workers at the PGH, a major COVID-19 referral center. 

The second phase will be community-based while the third phase will include all regions across the Philippines.

According to her, the P115-million study, expected to run until June 2022, aims to “estimate the real-world vaccine effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines used in the Philippines by immunogenicity and prevention of symptomatic COVID-19.” 

Berba added that the project would look into antibodies produced by COVID-19 vaccines.

“‘Yung antibody kasi (the antibodies), although that’s one of the things we will be measuring, is probably not the exact correlate to tell us that we are fully protected or not,” she said.

“One of the things that we’ll be doing in that project is to also, prospectively or forwardly monitor all of those who are enrolled into that project, whether they will or they will not develop COVID-19. I think ‘yun ‘yung (that’s the) ultimate measure of real-world effectiveness,” she added.

A vaccine expert earlier said COVID-19 jabs were found to perform better in real world conditions than in clinical trials. 

COVID-19 vaccine brands currently in use in the Philippines are Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Sputnik V, and Johnson & Johnson.

As of July 25, the country has inoculated 11 million individuals -- still far from the government’s target of vaccinating 70 million people to achieve herd immunity. —LBG, GMA News