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MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte will receive the COVID-19 vaccine once it is available in the Philippines, but will be vaccinated behind closed doors, Malacañang said Tuesday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the public would be informed if Mr. Duterte had been given the vaccine.
Roque was responding to a question about the president’s willingness to make the first injection of CoronaVac, the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech.
‘No problem’
He said that he had spoken with Mr. Duterte about the question and the president had replied, “No problem, I will take the vaccine as soon as it is available.”
The president knows that he must be vaccinated against COVID-19, Roque said.
“But he said he doesn’t have to show himself to the public. He is taking the route of the British sovereign because the decision of Queen Elizabeth and her husband was to deprive his vaccination, “he added.
Mr. Duterte has expressed his preference for CoronaVac or Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute.
The Philippines is expected to receive the first 50,000 doses of the 25 million doses of CoronaVac it plans to purchase next month.
The first batch of the vaccine manufactured by the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer is also expected next month. The Pfizer vaccine is the first to receive an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
China is also donating 500,000 doses of CoronaVac to the Philippines, and Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian on Tuesday guaranteed its safety and touted it as “very suitable” for tropical countries.
Emergency use permission
The Department of Health (DOH), however, said that no donated vaccine could be used in the country without the emergency use authorization granted by the FDA.
Sinovac has applied for an emergency permit for CoronaVac with the FDA, but the regulator has found that the company’s documents are incomplete.
The government aims to start immunization next month, hoping to vaccinate 70 million people, or two-thirds of the country’s population, this year.
The Philippines has one of the highest numbers of coronavirus cases in Asia.
On Tuesday, the DOH reported 1,357 additional coronavirus infections, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country to 504,804.
The DOH said 324 more patients had recovered, bringing the total number of COVID-19 survivors to 466,249. But the death toll rose to 9,978 with the death of 69 more patients.
Deaths and recoveries left the country with 27,857 active cases, of which 86.1 percent were mild, 6.1 percent asymptomatic, 0.42 percent moderate, 2.7 percent severe, and 4 , 7 percent critical.
–With reporting by Patricia Denise M. Chiu, Tina G. Santos and Reuters
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