MANILA, Philippines — St. Luke’s Medical Center is asking the national government for an allocation of 5,000 doses of CoronaVac, the COVID-19 vaccine made by Chinese firm Sinovac BioTech, to administer to its personnel in its branches at the Global City in Taguig and in Quezon City, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. revealed Monday.
According to Galvez, who is the vaccine czar, the government will hold a “mini” roll-out of the vaccines in both branches of the hospital.
“We were surprised,” Galvez said in Filipino during the pre-recorded weekly address of President Rodrigo Duterte.
“St. Luke’s is asking the 5,000 vaccine doses of Sinovac for 5,000 of their personnel. As we have seen, St. Luke’s prefers Pfizer, but we have also see that Dr. Peña texted,” he added.
Galvez did not give the full name of the doctor, but he was apparently referring to Dr. Arturo de la Peña, president and chief executive officer of St. Luke’s.
The government kicked off its Covid-19 immunization program at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) on Monday morning, with the hospital director, Dr. Gerardo “Gap” Legaspi being the first to take the Covid-19 shot.
The government is using the 600,000 Sinovac vaccine doses donated by the Chinese government, which arrived on Sunday.
According to Galvez, the government is eyeing to finish vaccinating all health care workers nationwide by March.
The government is convincing health care workers to get inoculated with CoronaVac even though the Food and Drug Administration earlier said was not recommending it for them due to its lower efficacy rate for the group.