President Rodrigo Duterte has authorized his administration’s plan to use up all of the country’s stock of 525,600 AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines as first dose to inoculate more health workers against the virus.
“The President has approved the request to utilize all COVAX-donated AstraZeneca vaccine doses as first-dose vaccination in order to protect a larger number of frontline healthcare workers in areas witnessing increased transmission,” Presidential spokesman Harry Roque announced.
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea will release an official memorandum on this, Roque added.
This recommendation was earlier announced by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, explaining that instead of setting aside half of the total doses for the second shot for health workers, all of them would now be received by more frontliners.
For AstraZeneca vaccines, the time interval for administering the second dose is 3 months from the first one. This means the government would have this time to secure another shipment of AstraZeneca doses from COVAX Facility for the second dose.
The Philippines expects a shipment of some 979,200 AstraZeneca shots from COVAX this March or in early April.
