COVID shots enough, but expert appeals for health compliance

Filipinos who have received their COVID-19 shots are already protected from further infection and boosters and bivalent vaccines may no longer be needed as long as people pay attention to their health, an infectious disease expert said.

“I think it’s not yet sure that boosters will be needed every year. If it happens at all, it’s more likely that it will be among the selected populations such the elderly, and maybe the highly exposed health-care workers,” Dr. Edsel Salvana told the Laging Handa briefing on Monday.

Salvana said it was unlikely that boosters would become an annual necessity, and so were bivalent vaccines, as he said it was not yet known how “really” effective they were in suppressing virus mutations and making it less transmissible.

Delaying boosters

Salvana, a member of the Department of Health (DOH) Technical Advisory Group, said he saw nothing wrong with health-care workers delaying their second booster shots while waiting for the arrival of the bivalent vaccines in the Philippines.

But he said health-care workers age 60 and above with comorbidities should get their second boosters.

“If you are [a health worker] below 50 years old, and you have no comorbidities, I think, it’s okay [to wait], based on science,” he said.

He recounted that he had his first booster shot in November last year and then waited for the bivalent second dose which he obtained in his US travel last October.

For the nonvulnerable population, he said the protection level provided by the current boosters “is not as big” as those provided by the bivalent booster.

The country has so far fully vaccinated 73,737,536 individuals, which is 94.41 percent of the government’s target to vaccinate at least 78.1 million.

However, only 21 million have availed of additional or booster shots for better immunity.

Cases still low

The DOH reported that cases nationwide stayed below 1,100, with a decreased daily average the past week by 9 percent to 1,082 from 1,185 cases the previous week.

Out of the 7,572 people who tested positive in lab tests from Dec. 12 to 18, seven were critically ill.

Out of the 17,593 infected persons, 28 percent or 4,964 are admitted in hospitals; the rest are presumed recovering at home.

As of Monday, 592 patients are in critical condition.

There were 186 more deaths, raising the official death toll to 65,094 out of 4,057,129 confirmed cases.

The DOH said 20.4 percent of COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 22.5 percent of non-ICU beds are occupied.

Salvana expressed optimism that the World Health Organization would lift the global health emergency by the first quarter of 2023 with COVID-19 cases plummeting and transmission slowing down due to the expanding vaccinations.

But he said people should not be negligent as COVID-19 would still be around and infections should still be managed.

“It’s very, very important that we recognize that when they say that the emergency phase is over, it means the threat that our health-care system will be overwhelmed is very unlikely because we already have the measures in place,” he said. INQ