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Areas with rising cases to get donated Sinopharm vax

By Joyce Ann L. Rocamora

August 20, 2021, 10:24 pm

<p><strong>CHINA AID.</strong> A total of 739,200 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine arrive at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 in Pasay City on Friday (Aug 20, 2021). Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian led other officials in welcoming the shipment. <em>(PNA photo by Robert Oswald P. Alfiler)</em></p>

CHINA AID. A total of 739,200 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine arrive at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2 in Pasay City on Friday (Aug 20, 2021). Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian led other officials in welcoming the shipment. (PNA photo by Robert Oswald P. Alfiler)

MANILA – The first tranche of the China-donated 739,200 doses of Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Manila on Friday, an indication of continued close partnership between Beijing and Manila.

The second tranche of 260,800 to complete the promised one million will be delivered on Saturday.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the donation would ramp up the country's vaccination drive, especially now that the country is experiencing a rise in active Covid-19 cases.

"This is going to help our country in ramping up our vaccination coverage to protect our people, especially the elderly, individuals with comorbidities and the front-line health care workers and of course, the President always says to include the poor families or indigent families," he told reporters upon the arrival of the Philippine Airlines flight carrying the jabs.

Duque said the new shipment will be deployed as soon as possible to Metro Manila, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, and other regions with a spike in infections.

The government will also procure the China jabs but Duque did not elaborate how soon.

"The Sinopharm already has the EUL (Emergency Use Listing Procedure) and the EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) so there's really no stopping to including this among the vaccines that we will procure," he said.

Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian is hoping the latest batch of donations would help the Philippines bring down its cases.

He added that the aid is a symbol of China's commitment to helping the country in its fight against the dreaded disease.

"The Philippines is facing a surge in new Covid-19 cases. To show our friendship and solidarity and our support, the Chinese government has decided to donate another one million vaccines of Sinopharm and we are also increasing our supply of Sinovac vaccine this month," he said. "We hope all these vaccines will contribute to bringing down the cases in this country."

The arrival also coincided with the release of the DOH's latest case bulletin that reported a 17,231 increase in active cases.

National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 medical adviser Dr. Ted Herbosa said the one-day spike involves several factors, which is why the government is monitoring the so-called average daily attack rate (ADAR).

"I was talking to Secretary Duque. He was explaining to me that malaking proportion diyan ay from the other areas of the Philippines, hindi NCR. (I was talking to Secretary Duque. He was explaining to me that a large proportion of that is from other areas of the Philippines, not all are from the NCR). We'll wait for the seven-day ADAR," he said on the sidelines of the arrival.

He explained that the government is looking at trends instead of one-day results because "there are days that the labs will do more tests and of course the percentage positivity rate will be higher”.

"Mas madami kang matetest for that day so ma-i-err ka 'pag nag-base ka sa isang araw lang (If you test a huge number for a specific day, you may err if you only base on this number). So you need to take the seven-day average daily attack rate," Herbosa added. (PNA)

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