BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – This city is capable of handling the Sputnik V vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) made by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute, according to Dr. Chris Sorongon, deputy for medical data and analysis of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) here.
Bacolod’s storage facility meets with the Department of Health’s requirements, Sorongon told Panay News, “as Sputnik V can be stored at two to eight degrees Celsius.”
This is also the same temperature requirement for the AstraZeneca and CoronaVac vaccines.
The city government, however, has yet to announce if it would ask the national government for Sputnik V vaccines, Sorongon added.
The Philippines was expecting the delivery of 15,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine yesterday but this was pushed back to Wednesday, April 28, said National Inter-Agency Task Force chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.
The Gamaleya Institute is also due to send 480,000 more doses on April 29, but there’s no information yet on whether it would be affected by the adjusted schedule of the first batch’s arrival.
Sputnik V is a viral two-vector vaccine based on two human adenoviruses – a common cold virus – containing the gene that encodes the full-length spike protein (S) of SARS-CoV-2 to stimulate an immune response. It also comes in two doses to be administered about 21 days apart.
In a study published in February by Gamaleya, the vaccine had a “91.6 percent efficacy without unusual side effects.”
The inoculation of the Russian-made vaccine is two doses with a gap of 21 days./PN
