FILE PHOTO: A vial of AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine is seen at a vaccination center in Westfield Stratford City shopping center, amid the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in London, Britain, February 18, 2021. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Sunday said that it will implement its vaccination rollout on Monday, March 15 with 700 vaccine doses from British-Swede drugmaker AstraZeneca.
The AstraZeneca vaccines will be allocated to the remaining health care workers, including the non-medical staff of our hospital and isolation facilities, who have not been vaccinated yet, PNP officer in charge Lt. Guillermo Eleazar said in a statement.
Due to the limited allocation, those who will be vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine will only be the PNP healthcare workers assigned in the National Capital Region, Eleazar added.
“The first priority is senior citizen healthcare workers in the PNP with comorbidity while the second priority is the senior citizen-personnel healthcare workers of the PNP,” the PNP OIC explained.
And of the 700 doses, only 350 will be vaccinated as the other half of the vaccines will be for the second dose.
“There are only a few of them here in Metro Manila so we expect that there will be remaining Astrazeneca doses for the third priority which is our health care worker personnel, regardless of age, but with comorbidity. If there are still left, we will go to the fourth priority which is our health care workers who were not vaccinated by Sinovac,” Eleazar said.
Aside from this, the police force also secured the second dose of vaccines from China’s Sinovac Biotech for 1,196 PNP healthcare workers who got vaccinated last March 1 to 7.
“We have already received and secured the 1,200 doses of Sinovac which will be used for the second shot for our PNP healthcare workers who were earlier vaccinated in our vaccination site at Camp Crame. The second dose of Sinovac will be administered 28 days after the first shot,” he said.
Originally, the PNP acquired 1,200 doses of Sinovac’s vaccine used for the vaccination rollout from March 1 to 7, but only 1,196 were used as four were already spoiled.
As of March 13, 12,162 members of the PNP have been infected with COVID-19, of which 849 are active cases.
A total of 11,280 have recovered, while 33 members succumbed to COVID-19.