With recommendations from medical experts that “some healthcare workers inoculated with certain vaccines may experience waning protection from COVID-19,” the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) supports the move to prioritize them in the administration of third shot or booster shot.
Through Spokesperson Jacqueline Ann de Guia, the CHR said it supports last Monday’s, Sept. 13, statement made by Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr. on the prioritization of healthcare workers in the administration of booster shots.
Galvez also said that the government is currently in talks with four manufacturers of vaccines to secure booster shots for health workers, which would possibly be administered during the first quarter of 2022.
Some P45 million has also been allocated for the procurement of booster shots, he added.
De Guia said the CHR noted that breakthrough infections in the Philippines which stands at 0.0013 percent of 9.1 million fully vaccinated individuals may seem “infinitesimal.”
“here is no denying that more and more frontliners are increasingly at risk of breakthrough infections in the midst of the highly transmissible Delta variant which has rapidly become the dominant COVID-19 strain in the country,” she said.
Thus, De Guia said, the CHR has stressed that it is crucial to provide health workers with ample amount of protection during the pandemic.
“As we await further recommendations from the Vaccine Expert Panel of the Department of Science and Technology, the Commission remains hopeful that should the administration booster shots be approved, ample vaccine supplies will be ready for medical workers and immunocompromised individuals,” she said.
In the meantime, De Guia said the CHR urges the public to be always on alert and practice health and safety protocols to stem the transmission of the dreaded disease, and stop its mutation.
“The best way we can stop COVID-19 and its mutations is to prevent its transmission. There is no mutation with no replication,” she added.