About 19 million fully vaccinated adult individuals, who received their primary Covid-19 doses from March to September, are now eligible to get booster shots, Dr. Kezia Lorraine Rosario of the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) said on Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has earlier approved the shorter administration interval of at least three months between the second shot of the primary doses and the booster shot.
Based on the latest data from NVOC, the Philippines has so far administered 104,379,306 doses nationwide, with 46,383,951 Filipinos fully vaccinated and 1,267,508 adults having received their booster shots.
Rosario said the country has enough supply of anti-coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) jabs in the stockpile that would also push for a massive booster vaccination campaign nationwide.
“We have sufficient supply ngayon (as of now). Enough even to do the booster administration at pagbibigay ng first dose at saka pagbibigay ng full doses (and for the provision of first doses and completion of the full doses),” she said.
She said the NVOC has set aside Covid-19 vaccines of all brands for booster vaccination, both homologous and heterologous combinations.
“Iyong wino-workout po ng operations center natin is (this is what the operation center is working out) – that somehow we can provide enough vaccines, all the brands that are required for the administration,” she added.
Rosario noted that the government has to allocate more AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Pfizer vaccines as they can be used as heterologous boosters for recipients of Sinovac, Janssen, Gamaleya, and the rest.
The NVOC is also studying the booster vaccine combination for pediatric vaccines since only specific brands could be administered to children.
Children aged 12 years to 17 years should only be injected with Pfizer and Moderna.
“Iyon ‘yung mga balancing act na kailangang gawin ng operations center, hindi lang sa national level kung hindi sa regional at saka local government (The operations center needs to do a balancing act, not only in the national level but also in the regional and local government levels),” Rosario said.
The NVOC assured an equal distribution of vaccine brands in all vaccination sites so that local government units would get the supplies they need to scale up their vaccination drives.
Source: Philippines News Agency
