Almost half of the elderly population in the country have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, four months after vaccination of this priority group began, the Department of Health said Thursday.
As of Wednesday, Aug. 18, some 3.77 million senior citizens, accounting for 45.67 percent of the Philippines’ elderly population, have received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje revealed during an online briefing.
“Our Janssen vaccines are a big help,” she said, referring to Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccines.
Cabotaje said 3.2 million others or 38.81 percent were partially vaccinated.
The World Health Organization had alerted the Philippines late last month regarding its “sluggish COVID-19 vaccination rate among senior citizens in some LGUs.”
“The slow rollout among senior citizens leaves the Philippines vulnerable to its hospitals being overwhelmed due to severe cases among the elderly, and possibly higher deaths due to a surge in cases from the fast-spreading Delta variant confirmed to be locally transmitted,” it said in a statement.
“We are very concerned that most of our older, more vulnerable people are still missing out on essential, life-saving vaccines against COVID-19. Not vaccinating most of our elderly now means more of them will suffer from severe illness and death. This is unacceptable when we already have adequate vaccine stocks to protect them,” said Dr Rabindra Abeyasinghe, WHO Representative to the Philippines.
At the time, only about 25 percent of senior citizens were fully vaccinated, and about 35 percent received their first dose.
The WHO said “the elderly are at the highest risk of the most severe outcomes of COVID-19,” with “seven out of 10 COVID-19 deaths in the Philippines are from this group.”
As of Aug. 18, the Philippines has fully vaccinated 12.87 million people against COVID-19, while 16.25 million others have received their first dose.
The government rolled out its vaccination program on March 1, kicking off with the country’s health workers.
The country hopes to vaccinate up to 70 million to attain herd immunity against the disease that has killed some 30,000 people in the country since last year.
‘Transport bubbles’
Malacañang supports the proposal to implement “transport bubbles” for those fully vaccinated individuals against COVID-19 once half of Metro Manila’s target population received the jabs.
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said this after Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose Ma. Concepcion III reiterated the need to impose bubbles for those fully vaccinated amid the emergence of the more transmissible COVID-19 Delta variant.
Roque described Concepcion’s proposal as a “point well taken,” especially since Metro Manila is close to achieving its “population protection” target.
4th shipment of Pfizer
The fourth shipment of government-procured COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer consisting of 365,040 doses arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport – Terminal 3 Wednesday night.
Of these doses, 51,480 shots were transported to Cebu City, also on Wednesday night, via domestic flight LD457, while another 51,480 doses were shipped to Davao City Thursday morning.
The remaining 262,080 doses were immediately delivered to the Pharmaserv Express’ cold-chain facility in Marikina City for temporary storage before being deployed to the National Capital Region, and other areas which have not yet received Pfizer vaccines.
Sinovac doses
The Philippines on Thursday received additional 3 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China-based Sinovac, a government task force said.
The government-bought vaccines arrived at NAIA shortly before 6 p.m. via a Philippine Airlines flight.
The Philippines has so far taken delivery of over 45.94 million virus shots since February, more than half or 24.5 million of which were from Sinovac.
