The Philippine government is “working doubly hard” to ensure the safety of the vaccine clinical trials in the country.

The assurance was committed by DOST Secretary Fortunato “Boy” T. de la Peña during the World Health Organization (WHO) Solidarity Trial Vaccines (STV) Public Announcement on Friday, Dec. 17.

“We, at the Task Group on Vaccine Evaluation and Selection led by DOST, and our review committees: the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the Vaccine Expert Panel, and the Single Joint Research Ethics Board (SJREB), worked and are working doubly hard to ensure that stringent and effective measures are in place in the conduct of these trials,” he said.

The WHO Solidarity Trial for Vaccines recruited its first volunteer on Sept. 30.

Serving as lead investigators of the trial are Dr. Jodor A. Lim and Dr. Marissa M. Alejandria from the University of the Philippines (UP) Manila-Philippine General Hospital (PGH).

Around 15,000 to 20,000 eligible participants are targeted to participate in the STV.

“Now that the vaccine trials are underway, we are hoping that the data we share with the other participants of the Solidarity Trials will contribute in finding more effective vaccines that can protect the Filipino people,” de la Peña said.

“Our country and the rest of the world are now a step closer to ending this pandemic.”

De la Peña cited the importance of having more available vaccines and the Philippines’ participation in the trial.

“We need to test the efficacy of those that were already made to these new variants, we need the results from these clinical trials, and we need them now.”

“Hence, our country’s participation in the clinical trials as part of the necessary steps in vaccine development will allow us to generate safety and efficacy data that are directly attributed to the Filipino population, and such data can be beneficial for eventual application for product registration with the Philippine FDA and ramp up distribution of the vaccines to a larger population.”

He said the quicker the country finds the most effective and safest vaccines for distribution, the earlier the world could reach WHO’s immunization targets.

Quoting the WHO, he said the world must inoculate at least 30 percent of every countries’ population by the end of the year to help control and eventually bring an end to this pandemic.

“When we hit these targets, we could prevent more people from being infected; we reduce the number of people suffering and dying from the effects of this illness; we decongest our hospitals and ease the burden of our health workers; and most importantly, we could prevent mutations that threaten to undermine our existing solutions.”

The Philippines is one of three countries in the world where the Solidarity Trial for Vaccines was launched. The two other participating countries are Columbia and Mali.