Get vaccinated to be part of the solution, says Lung Center doctor

The head of the Lung Center of the Philippines’ emergency room urged Filipinos to get vaccinated to be part of the solution to the COVID-19 crisis.

According to Chino Gaston’s report on “24 Oras,” Dr. Eileen Aniceto became the first person at the Lung Center to be vaccinated against the disease on Monday when Health Secretary Francisco Duque III gave her a shot of Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccine.

Speaking to the press afterwards, Aniceto said that though at first she was undecided about which vaccine to get, she trusts the Food and Drug Administration, which approved Sinovac for use.

“Get whatever is available. You wanna be part of the problem, ‘wag ka magpabakuna. You wanna be part of the solution, magpabakuna ka,” she said.

The first legal shipment of vaccines to the country arrived on Sunday, when a Chinese government plane with 600,000 doses of CoronaVac landed at Villamor Airbase in Pasay. It will be the only available vaccine in the country for at least a week until the arrival of the Oxford/AstraZeneca shot.

In giving Sinovac an emergency use authorization last week, the FDA said that it did not recommend the vaccine for health workers, who are exposed to COVID-19 patients.

“The use of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine on health care workers is not recommended as it has an efficacy rate of 50.4% in this group,” FDA director general Dr. Eric Domingo said.

Out of the Lung Center's 1,400 employees, only 150 agreed to be vaccinated with the Sinovac vaccine.

Doctors at the Philippine General Hospital said that CoronaVac should undergo further appraisal before being administered to healthcare workers. — Ma. Angelica Garcia/BM, GMA News