key: cord-1016039-okk95dq9
authors: Cordero, Dalmacito A
title: No COVID-19 vaccines on trash! Exploring effective vaccine management in the Philippines
date: 2021-06-17
journal: J Public Health (Oxf)
DOI: 10.1093/pubmed/fdab226
sha: 5e23352abfa391eded43de2c540dd00fe2601147
doc_id: 1016039
cord_uid: okk95dq9

nan

To the editor Every country has this ultimate goal of achieving herd immunity from the COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease). In a recent correspondence, the author scrutinized the Philippine government o cials' performance in terms of the promotion for the common good, public service and transparency due to the lack of long-term strategic recovery plan to achieve herd immunity in the country. 1 As I see it, one of the basis of this issue refers to the recent report concerning the growing concern on how fast the government can administer the more than 2 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses which were recently delivered to the Philippines, considering that the supplies are scheduled to expire in 1-2 months. 2 With this, it is very important to ensure that all available vaccines and those which will be arriving are well-managed and utilized to avoid reaching the expiration date, thus, will not come to waste. This is indeed very necessary to take into consideration most especially given the fact that as of 30 May 2021, the country's Department of Health is actually boasting that there has been a total of 8 329 050 doses of vaccines delivered to the Philippines. China's Sinovac has a total of 5 500 000 doses, AstraZeneca vaccine has 2 556 000 doses from the global COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) facility; three batches of Sputnik V vaccine doses totaling 80 000 purchased from Russia have also arrived last May 1; and the first set of 193 050 Pfizer vaccine doses from the COVAX facility arrived last May 10. 3 Millions of orders and donations are still expected to arrive from other countries within the year.

I had my first dose of the vaccine recently and I admire the e ort of our local government unit (LGU) with the program called Vax On The Go (VAX-OTG). It is the city government's drive-through vaccination program which has gone full blast and boosting the city's capacity to inoculate residents. 4 However, this is only one of the many strategic ways for a successful vaccination program and not all the other neighboring cities have the venue/facility to do the same. The important concern that needs to be addressed now is, 'what are the concrete steps to be done so that these millions of vaccines will be secured and utilized well?' I propose three steps in this correspondence. First, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched an initiative called E ective Vaccine Management (EVM) that provides materials and tools needed to monitor and assess vaccine supply chains and help countries to improve their supply chain performance. Greater storage capacity is now required at every level of the cold chain; countries must maintain lower stock levels, reduce wastage, accurately forecast vaccine requirements and prevent equipment break-downs. The goal is to ensure the uninterrupted availability of quality vaccines from manufacture to delivery, so that opportunities to vaccinate are not missed due to the unavailability of vaccines. 5 The Philippine government should fully utilize this initiative from WHO. All concerned personnel must undergo a mandatory training that is o ered by the EVM. All the materials and necessary training modules are actually available on the o cial website. Second, even some of the vaccines are still set to arrive, the government must see to it that a well-designed distribution plan must be implemented. It should not take more than 3 days for the national government to keep these vaccines in the facilities but these should be immediately distributed to the LGUs. In the same way, these LGUs should device also a strategic plan for proper distribution among their constituents. Since the big problem today is the issue of vaccine hesitancy from the public, then a massive house-to-house vaccination can be done. But again, this setup should still be voluntarily decided by the public so that their basic right is still respected. To encourage a more positive response, the LGUs then can provide incentives such as bags of groceries or even monetary assistance. It should be noted that the government has enough funds for any COVID-19 related expenses since the Department of Finance reported that the country has a whooping total loan of $14.29 billion (about P696 billion) as of mid-March 2020. Lastly, a continuous and day-to-day update should be done by the national government and the LGUs to monitor the supply and demand for vaccine so that there will be no surplus or at least lessen what is not needed. Overpurchase of vaccines including the donations from other countries with very short expiration date and yet no definite distribution plan from the government must be firmly discouraged. It is still a long way to go for the Philippines to win this battle against COVID-19. However, if proper communication and management are clearly practiced by all institutions involved, then the long wait may be cut short and herd immunity will be within reached.

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2 million AstraZeneca jabs to be fully used by end-July -DOH

The Philippines' COVID-19 vaccine distribution

Makati's drive-thru vax site new option for residents

Essential Programme on Immunization: E ective Vaccine Management (EVM)