DOH assures no wastage of AstraZeneca COVID vaccine doses

MANILA, Philippines — The health department on Friday said it has laid out a strategy to ensure that the initial batch of COVID-19 vaccines in the country from British-Swede firm AstraZeneca would be administered before its expiration by the end of  May.

“Ang dumating po sa atin, ‘yan po, ‘yung expiry sa end ng May, pero nakaayos na po ang strategies natin,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said.

(The vaccines that were delivered to us are expiring by the end of May but we already have strategies to use them up before that.)

Vergeire explained that vaccine manufacturers set the expiry date of vaccines to six months after production, since the vaccines may still need to be updated due to the “evolving” COVID-19 situation.

She added that no COVID-19 vaccine being rolled out now under emergency use authority across the globe has a very long shelf life.

Vergeire said the interval between the administration of the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine is from four to 12 weeks. 

“Nacompute na namin ‘yan. Aabot po ang interval natin for the second dose with these current doses that we have,” she added

(We have already computed that. The interval between the first and second  dose will fit with our schedule for the current doses that we have.)

An initial 487,200 doses of the AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine were shipped to the Philippines through the Covax facility on March 5.

On March 7, an additional 38,400 doses of the vaccine from the British drugmaker were also delivered to the country.

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