MANILA, Philippines — The appointment of a former military chief to helm the country’s vaccine initiatives doesn’t mean the government will rush its acquisition, with the Department of Health (DOH) giving assurance that the regulatory process meant to ensure that only safe and effective vaccines are given to the public remains in place.
Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Wednesday that there would be “no changes” in the vaccine procurement process just because Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. was designated “vaccine czar.”
“The procedure and processes in place would still be followed. More importantly, we will still implement our regulatory process to ensure that these vaccines would be safe and efficacious,” Vergeire said.
Safe vaccines
“We will not rush. We know that this is kind of urgent but all of these [vaccines] will still undergo the regulatory process to make sure these are safe and would give the desired effect to our population,” she added.
Galvez has no public health background, Vergeire said, and he is not going to be alone in his work as head of the vaccine program. She said Galvez, who also serves as the COVID-19 national plan chief implementer, would be guided by experts from the private sector, as well as the DOH and Department of Science and Technology.
“This would be a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. We will help and support him,” Vergeire said.
“No processes will be changed. He may just add a more expeditious process to speed it up … He was appointed [to his post] to ensure we would have an expeditious and more efficient manner of doing all of these things that we need for the vaccines to be brought here,” she added.
Earlier, Galvez said that based on the government’s seven-point immunization plan, the evaluation and acquisition of a potential vaccine should be completed by the year-end. Incidentally, clinical trials in the country of a potential COVID-19 vaccine isn’t expected to be conducted till December.
Vergeire explained that the government was looking at two mechanisms with regard to the purchase of the vaccine. One is through clinical trials and the other, through direct procurement with the vaccine manufacturer.
Offers from vaccine makers
Just because clinical trials of other vaccines have yet to begin doesn’t mean the country can’t purchase those vaccines that have been tested and are already in the market, she said.
“A lot of manufacturers are saying their clinical trials may be done by November and that we can already negotiate with them. They offered to us already,” Vergeire said. without disclosing the pharmaceutical companies.
“We are studying all those vaccines that are already in the advanced stages of vaccine development. We are looking at what would be most appropriate for our setting, our existing resources and would be purchased the fastest for our population,” she said.
Currently, 11 vaccines are about to or are already undergoing the large-scale Phase 3 trials where the safety and efficacy of the vaccine is tested on thousands of trial participants.
On Wednesday, the country saw the lowest increase in daily COVID-19 cases in four months, but the DOH said this was in part due to the effects of Typhoon “Rolly” (international name: Goni).
The DOH reported only 987 additional infections because some laboratories were unable to resume operations, as they had been affected by the typhoon, Vergeire said.
“We would like to caution that if some laboratories stop operations, our output will go down. But we will see an increase as soon as these laboratories become operational,” she said.
The last time the country saw a three-digit increase in new infections was July 14, with 634 additional cases.
More recoveries
Wednesday’s additional infections brought the overall number of cases to 388,137.
Davao City recorded the most number of new infections, 136, followed by Iloilo province (67), Quezon City (47), Taguig City (43) and Iloilo City (41).
The DOH said 140 more patients had recovered, raising the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 349,091. The death toll, however, rose to 7,367 with the deaths of 49 more patients.
The recoveries and deaths left the country with 31,679 active cases, of which 82.6 percent were mild, 10.1 percent asymptomatic, 2.6 percent severe, and 4.7 percent critical.