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Booster shot for frontliners start Nov. 15

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The government is doing an inventory of the healthcare workers who will receive booster shots against COVID-19, the Department of Health said Wednesday as it plans to start administering the third dose by Nov. 15.

According to Health Undersecretary and National Vaccination Operations Center chairperson Myrna Cabotaje, the government would inoculate around 1.9 million healthcare workers.

“We’re already creating a tally and getting an inventory of the healthcare workers that have been vaccinated, when they were vaccinated, and what they were vaccinated with,” she said during a press briefing.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire previously said that booster shots were given when immunity was starting to wane off several months after receiving the vaccine while additional doses, or the third doses, were given to individuals who could not mount the appropriate immunity against the sickness.

The government will be able to start the inoculation once the emergency use authorization of the vaccines has been approved and the World Health Organization has released its recommendation, Cabotaje said.

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“We’re already planning. We have our data, we are validating the areas, facilities nationwide, so we will know what vaccines to give,” she said.

“As soon as the SAGE [Strategic Advisory Group of Experts of the WHO] recommendations come out, we could vaccinate healthcare workers the following day. Then let’s look at our immunocompromised,” she said.

Cabotaje said it would coordinate with patient and doctors groups to identify the immunocompromised individuals.

“We will also track them. We are already starting to track them,” she said.

The Food and Drug Administration has received applications to amend the emergency use authorizations of some COVID-19 vaccines to include a third dose in their regimen.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. previously said the government will allot around 7 million doses for the third and booster shots of some priority groups.

But he said authorities would have to wait for guidance from the policy team, the revised emergency use authorization of vaccines that would be used, and the recommendation of experts advising the World Health Organization.

If these requirements are met, there will be a “simultaneous” Nov. 15 rollout of third and booster shots to immunocompromised senior citizens and individuals, said Galvez, who serves as chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19.

The country’s vaccine supply is enough to accommodate the rollout of additional and booster shots, Cabotaje said.

The Philippines has received 108 million vaccines and deployed 87 million jabs, while 21 million are “already on their way to being delivered” as of Oct. 31, Cabotaje added.

Some 1.5 million health workers and 4.6 million senior citizens have completed their coronavirus inoculation so far. Around 7.4 million persons with comorbidities have  also been fully vaccinated.

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