The Philippine Genome Center (PGC) has stressed that the vaccines against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) work against the Lambda and the Delta variants of coronavirus.
PGC Executive Director Dr. Cynthia Saloma emphasized that COVID-19 vaccines are effective against preventing severe illness and hospitalization of patients infected with the dreaded disease.
“I would like to emphasize that vaccines work both for the Delta as well as the Lambda variant,” Saloma said in a webinar Friday, Aug. 20. “ are very good at preventing severe cases as well as hospitalization.”
The Philippines has already detected its first case of the Lambda variant, which was first detected in Peru.
“In our country, we have only detected one out of more than 11,000 whole genome sequences we have analyzed at the UP PGC,” Saloma said.
The PGC chief explained that in vitro data in Japan showed that the mutations in the Lambda variant suggest that it has the potential for “immune evasion.”
But she noted that more data is needed to determine the clinical and epidemiological implications of the Lambda variant.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers the Lambda variant as a “variant of interest” (VOI), but she noted that the United States Center for Disease and Control (US CDC) does not considers the variant as a VOI.
Citing data from various studies, Saloma pointed out that there has been a decrease in the number of Lambda variants detected worldwide.
“I think that was one of the reasons why the US CDC does not consider as a VOI because it’s seems not to be spreading as compared to the Delta variant,” she said.
Saloma earlier said that highly contagious Delta variant, which is considered as a “variant of concern” by the WHO, has already overtaken the other strains that have been detected in the country.
“We used to have a lot of Beta and Alpha cases. Now there are more Delta cases in the samples we have sequenced,” she said in public briefing.
“ we started detecting the Delta cases in May, very, very few of the Delta mostly in the ROFs (returning overseas Filipinos). But eventually in June we have detected 72 samples. But immediately within July it was very high about 10-fold increase. About 721 cases of Delta in July,” she added.
So far, the country has detected 807 Delta variant cases.