Opinion-Editorial NEWS

The promise of freedom with COVID-19 vaccination

“Never was so much owed by so many to so few,” said Winston Churchill.The same sentence is more than apt to describe the efforts of our medical front liners during this pandemic. In the face of an unknown killer that was slaughtering indiscriminately, healthcare workers did not cower.

How did Sinovac become the first vaccine to be available in the Philippines?

Astra and Sinovac, which had mediocre vaccine efficacy numbers in their clinical trials, have outperformed vaccine effectiveness expectations. Many scientists feel that limitations in the methodologies from some of the clinical trials may have led to low vaccine efficacy.

Real world studies are confirming or even exceeding vaccine efficacy estimates from clinical trials for preventing symptomatic infection.

While scientists and experts meticulously choose their words backed up with sound data, purveyors of fake news boldly proclaim as gospel many half-truths and factoids taken out of context.

We are in the end game, and the virus is making its last stand.

And the answers we know for sure.

Why everyone’s participation is important in this fight.

For a disease like COVID-19 with an average incubation period of about five days and an R0 of 2, the number of cases is expected to double every five days if no mitigating measures are instituted.

Keep your guard up against vaccine pseudoscience.

Despite meticulous clinical trials with subjects in the tens of thousands, unusual and uncommon side effects in those with predisposing conditions may be seen on the order of one out of a hundred thousand doses or more.

What caused the surge, and how can we cope?

Emergency rooms are full, and clusters of COVID-19 are sprouting in workplaces and homes with alarming frequency. It is a year later and the whole world is still seeing surges in COVID-19 cases. The more transmissible variants may contribute to the surges, but the existence of variants is just one among several reasons for the increase in cases.

25 million people in the Philippines are at great risk of dying from COVID

Which are more infectious, and which are more resistant to vaccines?

The Philippines is once again making headlines in the vaccine world in an unfortunate follow-up to the infamous Dengvaxia fiasco. The latest reason is the decision by our Food and Drug Administration to limit the use of the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine (Coronavac) among frontline healthcare workers.

Vaccine hesitancy continues to rear its ugly head