MANILA — The government must provide medical front-liners with the “best” vaccine brand once it starts the rollout of booster shots, an official of a health workers’ group said on Sunday.
Jao Clumia, president of the St. Luke’s Medical Center Employees Association, said they were vaccinated with either Sinovac and AstraZeneca and “based on the news and even our own evaluations, the antibodies of these vaccines tend to decrease over time.”
An antibody is a protein produced by the immune system that neutralizes harmful substances such as bacteria and viruses that enter the body.
A study by Chinese researchers published in July reported that the antibodies of Sinovac jabs declined below an important threshold six months after people received the vaccine’s second dose.
A third shot, however, could provide a strong booster impact, the laboratory study indicated.
“A third dose of CoronaVac administered six or more months after a second dose effectively recalled specific immune response to SARS-CoV-2, resulting in a remarkable increase in antibody levels,” the report noted.
Clumia said there were about 16,000 health-care workers from 12 institutes of St. Luke’s, all of them vaccinated, who would require the booster shot.
“So our request, since we are one of the largest hospitals, is for us to be given the best vaccines like Moderna or Johnson & Johnson,” Clumia told the Inquirer.
“The health workers really need the booster shots. In fact, we have been waiting for that for two months now but the Department of Health (DOH) said that they are still waiting for approval,” he said.
In an Oct. 13 letter to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC) recommended putting the health workers first in line to receive the booster shots. It suggested that this be done in the last three months of the year.
Duque reportedly approved and signed the recommendation on Oct. 21. (©Philippine Daily Inquirer 2021)
