The government is urged to allow giving booster shots of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine four months after the second dose in order to "preserve the significant population immunity" the country is enjoying at present.
Non-profit advocacy group Go Negosyo and independent research group OCTA made the call during the townhall meeting “VAX to the MAX: Preventing the Surge” held last Dec. 15.
“We ... recommend that the national government consider shortening the interval between the second dose and the booster dose from 6 months to 4 months,” Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion and OCTA Research Fellow Fr. Nicanor Austriaco said in a joint statement.
The groups argued that "there is data that suggests acquired immunity from the COVID-19 vaccines significantly decreases at around five months, sometimes sooner depending upon the vaccine brand."
"Shortening the time between the second dose and the booster dose, especially today when the Philippines has an excess supply of vaccines, would preserve the significant population immunity that is mitigating the pandemic in the country at this time,” they stressed.
Austriaco said that the government must prepare to boost all Filipinos by the first or second quarter of 2022 to prevent a massive surge. He cited recent announcements from Denmark showing that vaccine effectiveness begins to wane after five months, and will administer booster shots at 4.5 months.
Concepcion, on the other hand, said that the Philippines has the tools to be able to handle the threat of waning vaccine protection in the population.
“We have the vaccines, and it will be those vaccines that will create that wall of protection,” he said.
“We don’t want to wait until our immunity is lost, it will make our kababayans more vulnerable,” said Austriaco. “Given the excess supply, our country should consider shortening the gap to protect more of our kababayans in the months to come.”
Concepcion and Austriaco’s joint statement also cited a recent data from South Africa which “suggests that the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV2 is indeed more transmissible and more immune-evasive. It is likely that it will trigger a surge when it arrives in the Philippines.”
It added, however, that the experience of South Africa also suggests that the patients infected with the Omicron variant experienced milder symptoms than that of patients infected with the Delta variant.
Concepcion and Austriaco also recommended that the country's vaccination drive "should continue to focus on increasing population immunity in our cities and first class municipalities, especially urban areas surrounding our international gateways, including all airports and seaports."
This, he said, will delay the spread of Omicron when it arrives, stressing that "the significant population protection in the urban regions of our country will also help to shield our farming communities and our kababayans living in the countryside, many of whom have not yet been vaccinated.”