Chinese-made Sinovac remains a "good vaccine" in preventing severe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) symptoms or virus-related deaths, a public health expert said on Monday, June 21.
In an interview with CNN Philippines, Dr. Rontgene Solante, a member of the country's vaccine expert panel (VEP), said more data and validation are still needed on Sinovac-injected Indonesian health workers who contracted COVID-19.
"I think we need to validate reports on these vaccinated healthcare workers in Indonesia. All those inquiries have not yet been answered based on peer-reviewed articles. These are just media releases and very difficult to interpret a media release without verification of the number of cases including the number of those vaccinated in order for us to compute the efficacy of this vaccine," Solante added.
The expert allayed fears of the vaccine's supposed inefficiency, stressing that Sinovac is still effective against the virus.
"We still believe that it's still highly effective against COVID and it's just a matter that they reported that these cases are among healthcare workers which are also the highly vulnerable among this population," Solante said.
"For me, I don't have any doubt that Sinovac is still a good vaccine," he added.
Over 350 healthcare workers have caught COVID-19 in Indonesia despite being vaccinated with Sinovac, and dozens have been hospitalized.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health (DOH) assured that real-world studies show that COVID-19 vaccines available in the Philippines are effective.
As of June 17, of the 14.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in the country, nine million are from Sinovac.
The Philippines is also using COVID-19 jabs from AstraZeneca, Gamaleya, and Pfizer.