PH’s COVID-19 vaccination to push through despite healthcare worker death

MANILA, Philippines — There is no reason to suspend the country’s vaccination drive against COVID-19 despite the death of a healthcare worker who was recently injected with a vaccine, the Department of Health (DOH) said Thursday.

Dr. Beverly Ho, concurrent Director IV of the DOH’s Health Promotion Bureau and Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, reiterated that the death of the healthcare worker was caused by COVID-19 and not by the vaccine.

“It’s very clear from the report that there is no reason to suspend our vaccination program as the vaccine was not what caused the death of our healthcare worker,” she said in an online media forum

“The causality assessment, which you have heard kanina, has determined that there is no correlation between the vaccine and this event so our national deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine shall continue,” Ho added.

She also said that the benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the risks of contracting COVID-19, especially in severe cases of the disease.

The DOH and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier said that “a death was reported in an individual who had received the COVID-19 vaccine and subsequently tested positive for COVID 19.”

The DOH confirmed that the patient was a healthcare worker “who succumbed to COVID-19.”

Both agencies said the Regional and National Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) committees, who conducted an investigation into the case, concluded that “the cause of the death was caused by COVID-19 itself, not by the COVID-19 vaccine.”

During the briefing, Dr. Rommel Lobo of NAEFIC said the patient, a 47-year-old woman, had comorbidities such as hypertension, diabetes, and bronchial asthma.

/MUF