Most people do not yet need vaccine booster shots against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as the vaccines remain effective at preventing severe infection, hospitalization, and death, said OCTA Research fellow and molecular biologist-priest Nicanor Austriaco.
Austriaco said a study of the clinical effectiveness of all vaccines in Davao City in August showed that their efficacy rate against severe COVID-19 was at 86.5 percent while it was at 97.5 percent against death.
"I was able to calculate the vaccine effectiveness in Davao because we wanted to see the vaccine effectiveness of the vaccines in the Philippines against Delta in a Filipino context. It’s difficult to do that in the NCR because there’s so much mobility between the NCR and Region 3, and Region 4. But we were able to get the data from Davao," he explained during a Malacañang briefing on Tuesday, Sept. 21.
Austriaco pointed out that the current vaccines used in the Philippines remain "incredibly powerful at protecting Filipinos against the Delta variant."
"Data from Davao suggests that we don’t need boosters for the general population yet," he added.
"I know a lot of Filipinos are wondering whether or not they should start receiving boosters. If the effectiveness is 86 percent as the data seems to suggest in Davao, in the general population, it suggests we don’t need that," he added.
Meanwhile, Austriaco said studies are also being conducted as to the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines among Filipino health care workers.
"We need the data for health care workers to see whether or not they need boosters as other countries are beginning to deliver those as well," he said.
Austriaco also expressed hope that Metro Manila will be able to decouple COVID-19 infections, hospitalization, and death once the region reaches 70 percent of the target population for vaccination.
"What this means is that if we see that the infections are going up when the population immunity reaches a certain point, the hospitalizations will not go up and in fact go down because the vaccines are protecting our kababayans (countrymen)," he said.
"We are hopeful that if we achieve 70 percent, hopefully, 80 percent of the total population, we will see significant effects on decoupling," he added.