Justifying a vaccine as ‘pwede na ‘yan’

IT is undeniable that science has ways of vetting vaccines. Using this lens, the Philippine Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved for emergency use the Chinese-made vaccine CoronaVac developed by Sinovac Biotech. It is a vaccine that was developed from an inactivated CNO2 strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, created from Vero cells. It is to be administered in two doses 14 days apart. It requires storage in a place that is between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius and with an unknown lifespan.

However, the FDA in its first advisory imposed a restriction on the administration of the Sinovac vaccine, advising that it should not be used on health workers. This limitation is based on the undeniable fact that from among the known vaccines developed against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), CoronaVac has the lowest recorded efficacy at 50.4 percent 14 days after the second dose for those with mild symptoms, according to a test run in Brazil. Although it should also be mentioned that it showed an efficacy rate of 78 percent in mild to severe cases in the same test run, a higher efficacy rate of 65 percent in another test run in Indonesia, and a much higher rate in Turkey at 91.25 percent.