Cop who got 1st Sinovac dose dies of COVID-19

A  police lieutenant who received his first dose of the CoronaVac vaccine has died of the Covid-19, the Philippine National Police said on Friday.

In a report of the PNP Health Service submitted to PNP chief Gen. Debold Sinas, the 50-year-old fatality from Calabarzon region and assigned at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group was inoculated on March 31.

He was included among the priority personnel to be vaccinated for having comorbidities. Two doses of Coronavac — developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac — should be given in intervals of 28 days to be fully vaccinated.

He was the 56th PNP personnel who died of Covid-19.

A week after receiving the vaccine shot, from April 7 to 11, he experienced headache, sore throat and difficulty of breathing. A swab test on him turned out he was positive for Covid-19.

He was admitted to a hospital in Batangas on April 15, but his oxygen saturation continued to decline to critical levels.

The police official was scheduled for hemoperfusion (blood filtration) on April 28. However, no hospitals in Metro Manila and Calabarzon admitted him for being full capacity, and was instead put on the waiting list.

He died the next day on April 29, according to his physician.

“I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. As front-liners every PNP personnel is risking their own safety, the least that we could do is to assure them that we would be there for them and their family to extend all the necessary support,” Sinas said in a statement.

2nd vaccinated death

This is not the first time a PNP personnel who received the first vaccine dose of vaccine died of Covid-19.

On April 8, a 48-year-old police officer assigned at the National Capital Region Police Office died of Covid-19. He was vaccinated also with Coronavac on March 31.

As of April 29, the PNP recorded a total of  20,150 of its personnel contracted Covid-19, of which 1,722  were active cases. More than 91 percent of those patients recovered at 18,372.

There was little data on Coronavac’s clinical trials that were released internationally to be peer reviewed by medical experts.

Its clinical trials in Brazil showed an efficacy rate of 50.4 percent —barely over the 50% threshold needed for regulatory approval by the World Health Organization.

Its late-stage trials in Indonesia and Turkey, however, had suggested the efficacy rate of the Coronavac shot to be between 65 percent and 91 percent.

In the most recently released results of clinical trials in Chile this month, Coronavac was 67 percent in preventing symptomatic Covid-19, 80 percent in preventing death.

They also showed the Chinese vaccine was 85 percent effective at preventing hospitalization with serious Covid-19 symptoms, and 89 percent at preventing intensive care admissions.

Majority got Coronavac

Despite these, more police officers opted to get inoculated with Coronavac. As of April 29, 5.5 percent  of the entire of the PNP force at 12,109 were already vaccinated.

Majority at 6,759 got Coronavac, while 1,995 were vaccinated with British-Swiss AstraZeneca vaccine. Six police attaches were vaccinated with US-developed Moderna (four) and Pfizer (two) vaccines.

Both pharmaceutical companies’ application for emergency use authorization for their Covid-19 vaccine are still pending before the Food and Drug Authority.

(Note: A shorter version of this story was published on Page A4 of the May 1, 2021 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The story was updated to provide more details and context.)