Vaccine arrival caught us by surprise, says DOH exec

By Uriel Quilinguing, Contributing Editor .

A HEALTH department official in Northern Mindanao revealed Saturday her office had expected the Sinovac vaccines to arrive Sunday (March 7), and not Thursday (March 4) dawn last week.

“The arrival of the vaccines caught us by surprise,” Dr. Ellenietta Gamolo, assistant regional director of the Department of Health 10 told Mindanao Gold Star Daily.

With the earlier-than-expected vaccine availability, Covid-19 referral Northern Mindanao Medical Center, and Philippine Army’s Camp Evangelista Station Hospital kicked off their vaccine roll-outs last Friday, hours before President Rodrigo Duterte arrived in this city for a meeting of task forces to end local communist armed conflicts.

Gamolo, the officer-in-charge of DOH 10, said she was alerted of the 17,400 vials (8,700 doses of CoronaVac) delivery in 29 bio-freezers on-board Philippine Airlines only last Wednesday evening.

This, she said, was the region’s share from 600,000 doses of CoronaVac that the national government received last Feb. 28, a donation from Chinese government, and manufactured by Sinovac, a Beijing-based pharmaceutical company.

She said that the instruction was for them to transport the vaccines immediately to their cold-storage facility for inventory.

“Natingala lang ko nganong naa may radio reporter nga gusto mag-interview (I was surprised why a radio reporter wants an interview),” said the officer-in-charge of DOH 10, after regional director Adriano Suba-an took a “sick leave” weeks ago.

Gamolo said their office has been complying with agency-wide policy, suspending all face-to-face interactions with the press since the coronavirus pandemic began in March last year.

She said that all invitations to the weekly virtual press briefings and Covid-19 fora are handled by the state’s information agency—the head of the communications cluster under the Regional Inter-agency Task Force on Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19).

She said that interviews were granted to a handful of radio reporters because they were already at Laguindingan airport at that time the vaccines arrived past 5 a.m. last Thursday.
Gamolo’s explanation was apparently in response to complaints from some journalists who claimed they were kept in the dark on the first-ever arrival of vaccines in the region, unlike in Davao City which had wide media coverage.

The acting DOH 10 head further disclosed that the 8,700 single-dose .5 ml Coronavac are intended for 15 public and private hospitals, vaccination rollouts of which must be completed by Friday, March 12.

These hospitals and their vaccine shares are: NMMC (1,820), Capitol University Medical Center (869), Mayor Hilarion A. Ramiro Sr. Medical Center in Ozamiz (848), Bukidnon Provincial Medical Center (530), Cagayan Polymedic Medical Plaza (527), Adventist Medical Center in Iligan (505), Gregorio T. Lluch Memorial Hospital, also in Iligan (499), Cagayan de Oro Medical Center (453), Maria Reyna-Xavier University Hospital (410), Madonna and Child Hospital (374), Lanao del Norte – Kapatagan Provincial Hospital (222), CESH in Patag, Cagayan de Oro (145), and Cagayan de Oro Polymedic Hospital (125), and Lanao del Norte – Kolambogan Provincial Hospital (77).

Marawi City-based Amai Pakpak Medical Center, which is under DOH 10’s administrative supervision, has been included in the Sinovac allocation with 1,181 doses.

Gamolo said that aside from the original 15, Doña Maria D. Tan Memorial Hospital in Tangub City was added to the list with 211 CoronaVac allocation because the health facility has recently been accepting Covid-19 positive patients with mild to moderate symptoms.

All 16 CoronaVac recipient hospitals have been admitting Covid-19 cases, with privately-owned health care facilities dedicating 20-percent of their beds for the purpose.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ian Christian Gonzales, head of DOH 10 infectious diseases cluster, in a virtual meeting with health care workers (HCW) on vaccine rollout last Saturday, announced that there are quick substitution lists (QSL), if allocations for priority hospitals are not fully used due to deferrals and non-eligible personnel.

In the case of HCWs in temporary treatment and monitoring facilities, community isolation units, contact tracers, and swabbing team members in this city are in the QSLs for unused vaccines from NMMC, CESH, CPGH and MRXUH.

All the other 11 medical facilities have QSLs—all HCWs in their respective locations.

Gonzales said that Sinovac’s emergency use authorization covers only 18 to 59 years old population and that the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (Nitag) has recommended that “health care workers be offered the vaccine and has the right to refuse without prejudice to eligibility in the next (available) vaccines.”