THE government hinted at mishandling as behind the spoilage of “a few vials” of COVID-19 vaccines.
In an online forum, National Task Force chief implementer Sec. Carlito Galvez admitted that a few vials of the China-made CoronaVac jabs had leaks rendering the drug unfit for human use.
He, however, said that there were some vials of the AstraZeneca vaccine which contained an extra dose, if not less than the standard 10 doses per vial.
In admitting wastage and spoilage of vaccines most likely due to mishandling, Galvez said that they have yet to determine exactly where in the supply chain the vaccines were mishandled, but said the lapses affected only a few vials.
To date, the government claims to have distributed all 1.125 million doses of vaccines the Philippines had received from the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility.
Interestingly, of the 1.125 million doses, the government has so far managed to administer 240,297 doses to health workers.
Earlier reports had four of the 1,200 vials of the Sinovac Biotech vaccine CoronaVac allocated to the Philippine National Police’s health workers went to waste. The same report said that two vials had leaks on the side of the bottle, while the contents of the other two had crystalized.
The government is expecting to complete the inoculation of the 1.7 million health workers by mid-April and begin the vaccination of about 4 million to 9 million elderly people by May, even as Galvez hinted at a faster vaccination pace that would see one Filipinos vaccinated weekly for the remaining weeks of March, two million people a week by May and three to five million to 5 million a week in June until the drive covers 70 million people toward the end of the year.
Galvez, who returned from India to secure 30 million doses of Novavax vaccines, expressed optimism that the government would be able to meet its target given a steady supply of vaccines to cover 70 million Filipinos.