WHO told the Philippine government to follow the priority list when using COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX.
The World Health Organization (WHO) told the Philippine government to follow the priority list when using COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX.
In a report on Manila Bulletin, the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraged the Philippine government anew to follow the prioritization list on who got the COVID-19 vaccine first as to maximize its impacts on the coronavirus pandemic.
According to WHO Philippines Representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe, the COVAX facility had committed to provide the Philippines with COVID-19 vaccines to cover 20% of its population.
Abeyasinghe also said in a public briefing that the figure included the frontline healthcare workers (A1 category) and the elderly population (A2 category).
“While recognizing the other groups are important, it is clearly defined that the largest number of deaths and severe cases are from the A2 group,” Abeyasinghe said.
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Abeyasinghe also noted that the World Health Organization’s priority list should be observed in order to maximize the COVID-19 vaccines’ impact on the coronavirus pandemic by reducing deaths, by ensuring that the frontline healthcare workers were fully protected, and by reducing congestion in the hospitals.
Last week, Malacañang announced that President Duterte had ordered the distribution of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to the indigent population as the national government had ordered 40 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine doses to further boost the country’s vaccine supply.
As of date, the COVID-19 vaccines that had arrived in the Philippines from the COVAX facility were Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines which had already been deployed to vaccination sites across the Philippines.
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