The FDA approved the emergency use of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine in the Philippines.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the emergency use of China’s Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine in the Philippines.
This, as the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech was the third one to be granted emergency use authorization in the country, next to Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccines.
FDA Director-General Eric Domingo on Monday announced during the “Laging Handa” public briefing that the Food and Drug Administration had granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the inactivated COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech.
The said vaccine may be administered on Filipinos 18 to 59 years old who were clinically healthy. However, Domingo said that the said vaccine wasn’t recommended for health workers who were exposed to COVID-19 patients.
READ ALSO: FDA OKs AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine For Emergency Use In PH
According to Domingo, clinical trials in Brazil showed an efficacy rate of only 50.4% when the said vaccine was administered on health workers at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients.
“So mas mabuti na po ‘yon kaysa sa wala, pero ang rekomendasyon nga po natin, ng ating mga expert, ay hindi po ito ‘yong pinakamagandang bakuna para sa Manila,” Domingo said.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in the country last January 14 and also approved the emergency use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine last January 28.
Earlier, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque announced that the Chinese government donated 600,000 Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Philippines — including 100,000 doses allocated to the Department of National Defense (DND) — and the Philippine government was expecting delivery of those vaccines on February 23, 2021.
However, Roque recently said that the lack of an emergency use authorization might delay the arrival of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said that once the emergency use authorization was released, it would only take “3 to 5 days” for the Chinese Embassy to prepare the shipment of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccines.
For more news and updates, you may feel free to visit this site more often. You may also visit Newspapers.ph via our official Facebook page and YouTube channel.
