Govt to launch vaccine tracker this week

The government will launch this week a vaccine tracker to keep the public informed on the progress of its coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccination program.

Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. made the announcement Monday, a day after Sen. Ana Theresia Hontiveros urged the National Task Force against Covid-19 and the Department of Health to set up a vaccine tracker.

Hontiveros said the tracker should include information on who had been vaccinated so far, which vaccines were arriving, their quantity and where and how many vaccines have been distributed.

Roque said the government expected that an Emergency Use Authorization would be issued for Gamaleya’s Sputnik V vaccine “anytime now.”

He added that Gamaleya had submitted all the necessary documents for the rollout of its vaccine.

The first shipment of Sputnik V is scheduled to arrive next month, he said.

Roque shared the observation of Sen. Panfilo Lacson that the government’s vaccine rollout had been slow.

Lacson last week said if the government did not ramp up vaccination, its target to inoculate 70 million and achieve herd immunity might not be achieved until 2033.

Roque explained that the pace of inoculations was slow because the supply of vaccines was limited.

He said the China-made CoronaVac, the first vaccine to arrive in the Philippines, was not recommended for frontline medical workers, so the workers were given the option to choose their brand of vaccine, adding that the pace of vaccination would pick up once different brands come in.

The country has received a total of 1,125,600 vaccine doses, 600,000 from Sinovac and 525,600 from AstraZeneca.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said almost 90 percent of the vaccines, which arrived this month, had been deployed.

The government expects 1.4 million more CoronaVac doses this March.

On the first anniversary of the imposition of enhanced community quarantine in Luzon, Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd said his department never had a “wasted opportunity” in strengthening the health system.

In a television interview on Monday, Duque took exception to the claim of Roque that the government made an “excellent” response to the pandemic.

“This is a new phenomenon, there is still a lot more to learn and we cannot claim as if we know so much about this as this [virus] can be treacherous,” the Health chief said.
He stressed that the country had learned so much in the past year and could do more in the second year of the pandemic.

“There is a lot more to be learned, we need to be very open to criticisms, as these criticisms can actually help…I think the objective is to help government improve its government response,” he said.

Duque’s assessment was shared by Bureau Director for Health Promotion and Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Beverly Lorraine Ho.

Ho said even before the pandemic, there were gaps in the health care sector and the pandemic provided the opportunity to fix them.

“’Yung importante sa atin ngayon, hindi natin sinayang yung pandemya (What is important is we did not have any wasted opportunity during the pandemic), we used it as an opportunity to improve our health care system, More than ever, our leaders have a renewed appreciation that it is important to make people healthy before you get to do other developments in the area,” Ho said in a separate media briefing.

From a single reference laboratory at the start of the pandemic, the country has established 229 laboratories that have done more than nine million tests, Ho said.

Hospital bed capacity and temporary isolation facilities and the training of health care workers have improved because of the pandemic, she said.

WITH RED MENDOZA