A police lieutenant who had been inoculated last month with one dose of the China-made CoronaVac vaccine has died of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the Philippine National Police (PNP) said Friday, April 30.

The 50-year-old fatality was an officer from Calabarzon (Region 4A) and assigned at the National Support Operations Unit (NSOU), a report submitted by the PNP Health Service to PNP Chief Gen. Debold Sinas bared.

The same report said that the unnamed cop was given his first dose of the Sinovac Biotech Ltd.-manufactured vaccine last March 31. He was included among the priority personnel of the PNP since he had a comorbidity.

However, a week after the inoculation, the cop experienced symptoms of COVID-19 such as headache, sore throat, cough, and difficulty in breathing, the report said.

He underwent a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test which eventually yielded a positive result, it added.

Despite undergoing medication, the oxygen saturation of the cop continued to plummet to a critical level, which led to his hospitalization in Batangas on April 15.

On April 28, the cop was scheduled for hemoperfusion, a procedure where a person's blood is filtered to remove toxins and decrease the level of inflammation and organ dysfunction in critically ill patients.

The PNP-NOSU immediately coordinated with various hospitals in Calabarzon and Metro Manila that could perform the treatment "but no hospitals currently admitting outside patients due to full capacity," the report said. The cop was placed on the waiting list.

On Thursday, April 29, the cop was declared dead by his attending physician, making him the 56th COVID-related fatality in the PNP.

"I would like to express my heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family. As frontliners every PNP personnel is risking their own safety, the least that we could do is to assure them that we would be there for them and their family to extend all the necessary support," Sinas said.

As of April 29, the PNP has already recorded 20,150 cases of COVID-19. Of the figure, 1,722 are active cases, while 18,372 cases have been declared as recoveries.

The efficacy of the CoronaVac vaccine--which requires two doses--was again put into question with the death of the vaccinated cop.

According to the Department of Health (DOH), CoronaVac has an efficacy rate of 91.6 percent against symptomatic COVID-19 after 21 days of inoculation from the first dose.

The DOH added that the Chinese vaccine is also deemed 100 percent effective against moderate or severe infection after 21 days of inoculation from the first dose.