Tuguegarao City, Cagayan – With more COVID-19 vaccines expiring in the country, the Department of Health said the COVAX Facility will be replacing the said doses procured by the private sector, Local Government Units and the government.
DOH’s OIC Maria Rosario Vergeire said the agency had an agreement with the COVAX Facility that ALL expiring vaccines will be replaced including those procured by LGU’s and the private sector.
Vergeire also clarified that the wasted vaccines are at a total of 6.6 percent, a figure significantly lower than the set 10 percent threshold of the World Health Organization.
The health department also said in a recent presser that there are still available doses of various COVID-19 vaccines in the country to be shelled out before scheduling new deliveries from COVAX.
Presently, around 72 million Filipinos are fully-vaccinated against COVID-19 or have received two doses, while only 16.6 million have received their initial boosters.
Meanwhile, the DOH and the Inter-Agency Task Force have confirmed that the current surge in the country is driven by the highly transmissible Omicron BA.5 subvariant.
According to the WHO, the BA.5 strain is not only faster in transmitting, but is also capable of evading immunity from previous infection and vaccination, prompting health ministries across the globe to push for booster rollouts. TNF