Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. on Wednesday said the country’s mass vaccination program would aim to vaccinate at least 20 million Filipinos annually starting 2021.
The “best case scenario” for the vaccine timeline would be to have vaccines registered and ready for public distribution by the second quarter of 2021, Galvez said.
“Although mayroon na tayong clinical trial this coming December, inaasahan po natin na iyong mga result po kasi ng regulatory board natin sa FDA (Food and Drug Administration) baka matapos po iyon mga first quarter [ng 2021],” he said in a Laging Handa briefing.
“So ang best case scenario is second quarter, ang worst case scenario o tinatawag na realistic scenario ay end of the year or early 2022,” he added.
The government targets to vaccinate “more or less 20 to 30 million Filipinos a year.”
Kung two doses ‘yun, tapos ang mabibigyan mo lang is 25 million, one-fourth ng ating population, hindi pa ‘yun herd immunity, kasi sabi mo nga 60 to 70 percent,” she added.
The Department of Finance earlier said the Philippine government had allocated P73.2 billion for the Covid-19 vaccination of 60 million Filipinos.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said 60 million people would be enough to achieve “herd immunity” in the country.
The World Health Organization defines herd immunity as a concept used in vaccination in which a population can be immune to disease when a certain threshold of population vaccination is reached.
As of Nov. 24, the country has recorded 421,722 Covid-19 cases. John Ezekiel J. Hirro