Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III said that the monitoring on the use of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the inoculation program against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is currently ongoing.
“There has been no report of difficulties so far but it’s just been started and we need to monitor the way that this particular vaccine is used to inoculate people,” Duque said Thursday, May 13, during the symbolic vaccination in Makati City.
Duque said that DOH has yet to receive any reports coming from the Local Government Units (LGUs) on the possible challenges they have encountered using the Pfizer vaccine for their respective inoculation programs.
On May 12, the cities of San Juan and Makati have started administering the Pfizer – BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine doses to its priority groups.
The Philippines welcomed the arrival of 193,050 doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech on May 10.
This is the fourth vaccine brand of vaccine that was made available in the country.
This is also the country’s first shipment of doses from the American pharmaceutical company through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility led by the World Health Organization (WHO).
DOH said that Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed to Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao where there are sufficient storage facilities in handling the temperature requirements.
Those under Priority Groups A1 to A3 - composed of healthcare workers and medical frontliners, senior citizens and persons with comorbidities - are the eligible vaccine recipients.