COVID-19 vaccine simulation exercise held

The public on Tuesday, Feb. 9 was given a glimpse of what will happen when the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines arrive here in the country.

The Department of Health (DOH) and government agencies held a simulation exercise in preparation for the impending arrival of 117,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccines this month.

The simulation exercise started with the arrival of the vaccines at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Pasay City. After, it was loaded into a van and brought to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City for storage.

A team inspected the vaccines at the RITM.

"This process is important to ensure that the vaccines are in good condition," Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said in his speech at the RITM.

"The vaccines will be stored in ultra low freezers capable of storing the vaccines meeting a temperature range between -60 to -80 degrees centigrade," he added.

Duque said the vaccines stored will later be distributed to implementing sites, hospitals.

"What we have done today is subject to review. How the conduct of the loading, transport, unloading, receiving, inspection. We have a target. Customs clearance 30 minutes. Unloading 15 minutes. Transport 20 minutes. Receiving and inspection 15 minutes...allocated time of 120 minutes. Hopefully, this will be cut by half, 60 minutes," he said.

Duque added:"If we can shorten it, so much the better."

He said even in the actual distribution in the vaccination sites there will be an allocated time.

"So far so good," Duque said.

"Hopefully, we will be instrumental to make a clear picture of how things will actually occur or happen based on our plans and the improvement is really something that we all ought to do...there's always room for improvement," he added.