VACCINE recipients who have received the first dose but have been unable to return for their second dose as scheduled may still get the vaccine up to three weeks later, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Director General Eric Domingo said Tuesday night, July 6, 2021.
“H’wag po kayong matakot dahil kahit po ma-delay kayo ng isang linggo, dalawang linggo o tatlong linggo, it’s still worth it to get the second dose because it will still improve and increase your resistance to Covid-19 (coronavirus disease 2019),” Domingo said during President Rodrigo Duterte’s weekly Talk to the People on Covid-19 Tuesday midnight.
Domingo issued the assurance amid delays in the delivery of Sputnik V’s second dose, or component II, and the next Sinovac shipment, which is expected to arrive only in the third week of this month.
He stressed the need to return for the second inoculation in order to get maximum protection from Covid-19, which sets in two weeks after the second dose.
He noted that fully vaccinated persons who contract Covid-19 develop only mild symptoms that do not require hospitalization.
“That’s why we’d like to remind our countrymen that it’s really important to complete the two doses,” he said.
Domingo said the FDA has approved an amendment to the EUA issued for Sputnik V, the adenoviral vector vaccine developed by Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology, to extend the interval between the first and second doses to 42 days from the current 21 days.
Domingo said Gamaleya had sought to extend the interval to 90 days but vaccine experts recommended a maximum of 42 days.
He said there should be no problem if delivery of the second dose, or component II, of the vaccine is delayed as long as it is given within 42 days after the first dose.
“If we give it within 42 days, we have enough reason to believe that the results are going to be very good,” he said.
Sinovac Biotech, meanwhile, applied Tuesday afternoon for amendment to its emergency use authorization (EUA) in the Philippines to allow the administration of its inactivated Covid-19 vaccine to children from three to 17 years old.
If approved, the Sinovac vaccine would be the second vaccine, next to that of Pfizer, that may be administered to children in the Philippines once the vaccination program against Covid-19 is expanded.
The FDA earlier amended the EUA issued to Pfizer to also allow the administration of its vaccine to adolescents 12 to 17 years old.
Domingo also said the FDA has issued an EUA to the Department of Health (DOH) to allow the use of AstraZeneca vaccines that will be donated by Japan.
An EUA was also issued last week for the single-dose Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccines donated by the United States, he added.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. earlier announced that Japan will send one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine on July 8 while the US will deliver, through Covax, 3,024,000 doses of the Janssen vaccine within the first half of this month.
Domingo assured that all vaccines approved for emergency use are safe.
The number of adverse events following immunization constitute less than one percent of the total doses administered and all have been mild such as headache, fever and pain at the injection site, he stressed.
“Very unusual po ang mga moderate to severe adverse events. The vaccines are safe,” he said. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / SunStar Philippines)