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MADE IN CHINA A doctor shows the Sinovac vaccine. —AFP
Manila, Philippines – Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri on Saturday urged the Interagency Working Group for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to reconsider its plans to take advantage of vaccines with a low efficacy rate, calling this proposal “unacceptable.”
“We call on the leaders of our working group to analyze the effectiveness of the [vaccine] more than political or geopolitical reasons. The safety of our people should come first, not the feelings of our neighboring friends, ”he said.
Zubiri did not name a specific brand, but made the comment after the IATF announced that it preferred vaccines made by Chinese pharmaceutical companies Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino because of their “affordability and production capacity.”
The government also announced that it was at an advanced stage in working out a deal to purchase 25 million doses of Sinovac after Western pharmaceutical companies struggled to meet demand from nations, particularly the United States, which had already paid for it. vaccines even before the end of clinical trials.
But Brazil, the first country to complete a late-stage trial of the Sinovac vaccine, said on December 23 that the vaccine, called CoronaVac, was only more than 50 percent effective according to trial data.
The Department of Science and Technology said that CoronaVac’s 50 percent effectiveness rate is “acceptable” because that was the minimum requirement from the World Health Organization.
‘Waste of funds’
Zubiri recognized that several factors should be considered when choosing a vaccine for Filipinos, primarily safety, efficacy, price, and ease of distribution and implementation.
But spending taxpayer money on vaccines that were only 50 percent effective would be a “total waste of funds and resources,” he added.
“That means there is a 50-50 chance that you will get COVID even after you have been vaccinated, [which] It’s a joke! “He said.
He said other brands, such as Pfizer, have a higher efficiency rating of 95 percent, but the country lacks storage facilities that can maintain temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius. INQ
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