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Quezon City and Manila will resume administering COVID-19 vaccine first doses to qualified recipients on Saturday, May 1, after a shortage of supply prompted the local government units (LGUs) to pause full-scale immunization efforts in mid-April.
Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte said her LGU received 7,800 first doses of the Sinovac vaccine from the national government on Thursday, April 29.
“We will be vaccinating [residents] tomorrow (Saturday) onwards,” she told Rappler on Friday, April 30.
Manila Mayor Isko Moreno also confirmed that his city received a total of 8,400 Sinovac vaccine doses from the national government on Thursday.
“I know it is a holiday (Labor Day) tomorrow (Saturday), but as our commitment to [residents], we will not stop as long as we have capabilities to deploy, because we believe vaccination is the solution,” he said in an online press briefing on Friday.
It took a week for the two cities to receive the new vaccine supply, which came from the 500,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered by China’s Sinovac on April 22, as part of the total 25 million CoronaVac doses purchased by the Philippine government.
Malacañang said on Monday, April 26, that paperwork issues stalled the vaccine deliveries to the LGUs.
“Iyong dumating na [500,000 doses], nalaman ko na hindi pa natin nadi-distribute iyan, kasi humihingi sila ng certificate of analysis, para masigurado na iyong dumarating na batch ng Sinovac is of the same standard,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said on Monday.
(I found out that we have yet to distribute the 500,000 new doses because the Food and Drug Administration is asking for a certificate of analysis from Sinovac to ensure that the new batch of vaccines is of the same standard as the previous shipments.)
A certificate of analysis is among the documents required by the FDA, which also monitors the importation of vaccine by batches/lot numbers in compliance with emergency use authorizations.
When the first batch of Sinovac vaccines arrived in the Philippines on February 28, multiple LGUs in Metro Manila received the supply allocated to them one to two days later, and were able to kick off vaccinations right after.
Pasay, which also encountered vaccine supply problems in mid-April, said it resumed administering COVID-19 vaccine first doses to residents on Thursday after receiving new Sinovac vaccine shots meant for 3,000 people from the national government.
“Tumigil noong April 20 iyong first dose pero tuloy-tuloy iyong second dose. [Simula] April 21, mga second dose na [lang] iyong binabakunahan,” Pasay public information chief Jun Burgos told Rappler on Friday.
(First-dose vaccinations were paused on April 20, but second-dose vaccinations continued. Beginning April 21, the inoculation drive was for those up for second dose.)
In Quezon City and Manila, the immunization drive for residents who were scheduled to receive their second dose in the past two weeks also continued.
At least 124,616 residents of Quezon City have been given their COVID-19 vaccine first dose as of April 21.
Meanwhile, Manila has administered first doses to 74,430 people as of April 30.
As of Thursday, the country’s total number of vaccine doses is 4,025,600. Over 1.5 million Filipinos have been administered with a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Department of Health as of Tuesday, April 27. – Rappler.com
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