PH joining int’l effort to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccines

The Philippines is joining an international effort aimed at guaranteeing rapid, fair and equitable access to vaccines developed against the new coronavirus.

In a resolution, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases approved the country’s participation in the Gavi COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) facility and “its corresponding allocation of funds.”

The move came a week after Gavi, an international organization created in 2000 to improve access to new and underused vaccines for children in poor countries, announced that 75 nations had formally expressed interest in joining the Covax facility to protect their respective populations from the pandemic.

The 75 countries will finance the acquisition of the vaccines from their own public budgets and will also link up with 90 lower-income countries, which could be supported through voluntary donations to the Gavi Covax Advance Market Commitment.

The alliance seeks to deliver two billion doses of safe and effective vaccines, once these have passed regulatory approval, by the end of 2021.

The vaccines will be delivered equally to all participating countries, proportional to their population, with health-care workers as the priority group. This distribution will later be expanded to cover 20 percent of the population of participating nations.

Before seeking a spot in the Gavi Covax facility, the Philippines took part in clinical trials conducted by five Chinese biopharmaceutical firms developing their own vaccines against the coronavirus.

Stem cell therapy

Manila also joined the World Health Organization’s trials to find an effective, safe treatment for COVID-19 patients.

Also on Friday, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque commended The Medical City hospital’s use of mesenchymal stem cell therapy for patients with coronavirus-related pneumonia.

Virus case update

Mesenchymal stem cells are multipotent cells in the bone marrow, which are being studied as therapy for immune-mediated diseases—the definition for conditions in the body resulting from abnormal activity in the immune system.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been several clinical trials to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of mesenchymal stem cell therapy, although there are no approved approaches yet.

The Department of Health on Friday recorded an additional 2,103 COVID-19 cases, bringing the national caseload to 76,444.

Of the newly reported cases, 1,029 are patients who tested positive within the last three days, while 1,074 are patients who were confirmed to have been infected four days ago or earlier.

Metro Manila accounted for most of the cases at 1,272, followed by Cebu (291), Laguna (107), Rizal (83) and Cavite (53). The new cases were based on the submission of 78 out of the 90 accredited laboratories.

Of the total number of cases, 50,063 remain active.

There are now a total of 24,502 patients who have recovered from COVID-19, with the recovery of 144 more patients. The death toll increased to 1,879 as 15 patients succumbed to the severe respiratory disease.

Of the newly reported fatalities, 11 died this month, while 3 died in June. One patient died in April.

Thirteen of the deaths are from Central Visayas, while the two others from Central Luzon and Western Visayas.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that currently the nationwide case fatality rate was at 2.46 percent.

Vergeire said that over the last few weeks, they had seen an improvement in the management of COVID-19 cases as the mortality doubling time lengthened to 11.97 days from 8.28 days on June 1.