The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an emergency use listing (EUL) for Covovax, which paves the way for its delivery to the Philippines, the distributor in Manila has said on Tuesday.
The Philippines earlier this year signed an agreement for 30 million doses of Covovax. It is developed by US firm Novavax and is produced by the Serum Institute of India.
The vaccine is the ninth jab that has been given an EUL, which allows countries to expedite their own regulatory approval to import and administer COVID-19 vaccines, according to the WHO.
Covovax has an overall efficacy rate of 90.4 percent and it is 92.6 percent effective against variants of interest and concern, said pharmaceutical firm Faberco, one of its distributors in the Philippines along with Unilab.
“We are looking forward to helping the nation ease further into the next normal where COVID-19 is expected to continue being a health issue worldwide,” said Vinay Panemanglor, chairman of Faberco board of directors.
Covovax is given in two doses at least three or four weeks apart, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director General Eric Domingo earlier said.
The jab is a new kind of vaccine that makes use of the protein subunit platform, which means it replicates the pure antigenic part of the virus to elicit immune response, Domingo said.
Meanwhile, the independent monitoring OCTA Research Group said Tuesday COVID-19 reproduction number in the National Capital Region (NCR) went up to 0.48, higher from the previous 0.39.
The reproduction rate refers to the number of people infected by one case. A reproduction number that is below 1 indicates that the transmission of the virus is slowing down.
The average number of cases in the region stood at 79 cases from December 14 to 20. This is lower than the average of 91 cases per day from December 6 to 12, OCTA said.
The report also shows that the average daily attack rate was recorded at 0.55 per 100,000 population while the positivity rate was at 0.6 percent.
OCTA said the region had an average of 18,127 RT-PCR tests over the past week.
NCR and all 15 local government units are classified as very low risk while Las Piñas and San Juan are classified as low risk by OCTA.
In a disclaimer, OCTA said the report did not reflect the position of the Department of Health (DOH), the Inter-Agency Task Force, and other local government units.
The Philippines logged Tuesday 168 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total to 2,837,719, with low laboratory output as four labs were not operational while 20 were not able to submit their data on time, the Department of Health reported.
The DOH also reported 372 new recoveries, bringing the total recoveries to 2,777,541.
Active cases stood at 9,384, of which 508 are asymptomatic; 3,289 mild; 3,406 moderate; 1,804 severe; and 377 critical.