Over 12K COVID-19 vaccine doses discarded, 51.48M administered —DOH

A total of 12,970 doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been discarded due to issues with temperature, transportation, and labelling, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Monday.

“Most of the reasons ay itong temperature excursions, no? Mayroong nagkaroon ng sunog sa Cotabato at saka doon sa Ilocos Norte dati kung saan ang ilang bakuna natin ay nadamay,” Vergeire said in a media briefing.

(Most of the reasons were temperature excursions. There was a fire in Cotabato and Ilocos Norte before and some of our vaccines were affected.)

“Meron tayong nabalitaan noon na mayroong nagkaroon ng wastage dahil doon transport. Nagkaroon ng doon sa banka na sinasakyan nila, may issue tayo doon na parang nalubog ‘yung mga vaccine,” she added.

(There was also wastage due to transport. There was an issue with the boat transporting the vaccines and I think the vaccines were submerged in water.)

Vergeire said vaccines that were not labeled or those whose labels have been damaged were discarded.

“‘Yung iba naman may reports may mga particulate matters doon sa bakuna… kapag ganoon ang itsura ng bakuna, hindi na natin ‘yan ginagamit. So dinidiscard,”  she said.

(We also received reports that there were particulate matters in some of the vaccines. If that’s the case, then we can’t use it anymore. We had to discard it.)

The latest data from the National Task Force Against COVID-19 showed that the Philippines has received 90.61 million doses since February.

Of this, 51.48 million have been administered.

Meanwhile, a total of 23.98 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.—AOL, GMA News