Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman said that if he could choose, he would get vaccinated with the vaccines developed by Chinese firms.

Harry Roque echoed the sentiments of the President, who had made known his preference for Chinese or Russian vaccines months ago.

“If I could choose, wala naman talagang preference ‘yan, I would choose the two Chinese brands because inactivated po sila. Pero ‘yan po ay personal desisyon ko lamang,” he said on Thursday, January 14, during a press briefing.

(If I could choose, there’s no room for preference here, but I would choose the two Chinese brands because they’re inactivated virus vaccines. But that is just my personal choice.)

The vaccines of both Sinovac and Sinopharm make use of inactivated virus technology. This means that their vaccines contain an inactivated virus or a form of the virus that has been weakened so it won’t cause disease, but will still generate an immune response. 

These kinds of vaccines have been used against rabies, polio, and hepatitis A.

Promoting Chinese vaccines

Stating his preference for the Chinese-made vaccines was just among other statements of Roque that showed the Sinovac vaccine in a good light.

The Duterte spokesman also spoke of 65% and 91.25% efficacy rates resulting from Sinovac clinical trials in Indonesia and Turkey, respectively. However, he failed to say that the number of participants in these two studies were too small to draw a significant conclusion.

But in Brazil, where clinical trials involved 13,000 people, an initial 78% efficacy rate against mild infections and 100% efficacy rate against severe infections were found. But more recent data showed the overall efficacy rate to be just 50.38%.

Roque also talked of how Indonesian President Joko Widodo had just gotten vaccinated using CoronaVac, the Sinovac vaccine, and how Indonesia and Turkey have just approved the jab for emergency use.

Still, Roque said the Duterte administration is not favoring any vaccine over another. Sinovac has emerged as a frontrunner in the country’s vaccine rollout because it had committed to deliver doses as early as February.

But apart from the Chinese vaccine, the government also expects doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines to arrive in that month as well. – Rappler.com