Children won’t be receiving any COVID-19 vaccines for now, according to Malacañang.
Malacañang said that children won’t be receiving any COVID-19 vaccines until it was certain that the vaccines were safe for children.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque made the statement as the Philippine government prepared to begin its vaccination program with the arrival of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines in the country this coming week.
In an interview on GMA Network’s “Stand For Truth Hot Seat”, Roque was asked why the Philippine government wasn’t prioritizing children in the COVID-19 vaccination program when the United Nations (UN) encouraged governments to prioritize children in every government initiative.
In response, Roque told Joseph Morong of GMA News that the Philippine government was doing exactly just that.
“On the contrary, we are not giving the vaccines to children because we’re giving them [the] utmost priority Until we are certain that the vaccines are safe to be given to children, we will not give it to them,” Roque said.
The Philippines had issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) to the COVID-19 vaccines of Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford, but none of them had been tested on kids.
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Meanwhile, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview with ProPublica last February 11 that kids as young as first-graders may not receive COVID-19 vaccines until September 2021, presuming that clinical trials would be successful.
Moderna and Pfizer had enrolled children — 12 years old and older — in clinical trials of their respective COVID-19 vaccines, while Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, and Novovax were planning to do the same, though they’re very far behind.
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