New Strategies to Force Uptake: Philippines DOH to Force Legacy Vaccine Boosters as Prerequisite to Receipt of the "Desirable" Bivalent Booster.

The Senate and DOH pushing to address wastage and increase uptake. 9th March DOH vaccine tracker adjustment increases dosing to 79.8 million primary and 24.7 million booster dosed. Data discrepancies.

Mar 12, 2023

Article from official Philippines Government News Agency reporting on the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigation on Covid-19 Vaccine Wastage is interesting to unpack.

DOH Refused to Disclose Vaccine Contracts. Are the NDA Missing?

The Senate is investigating failure of the DOH to release their vaccine procurement contracts with vaccine manufacturers on the pretext of a supposedly existing non-disclosure agreements. Do these NDA exist? There appears to be doubt.

DOH to Try Anew to Ramp up Covid-19 Vaccination

MANILA – The Department of Health (DOH) assured the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee (SBRC) on Thursday to ramp up its coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccination campaign using new strategies to prevent more wastage.

The DOH have spent massively on marketing the jabs.

DOH had a Covid-19 marketing and campaigns budget of PHP625,115,034.37 in 2021. I did not find a specific marketing budget for 2022, but I did find from the 2022 Budget Briefer that the DOH had allocated PHP78.8 billion to Universal Health Care Act Implementation and Covid-19 Initiatives, with 19.68 billion specific for Covid-19 Initiatives (Page 29).

DOH has a PHP320 billion budget for 2023. Surely DOH has spent enough money on pushing these jabs! They are widely and readily available everywhere, and strongly encouraged. If people want them, they would have taken them by now!

The Senate seem to be indicating that the DOH has not adequately pushed vaccines. Tolentino suggested that the DOH should be making covid-19 more visible to encourage booster vaccination uptake.

How Can People Be Scared When Cases Are So Low, Deaths are So Low?

Daily deaths from Covid-19, by date of death, have been consistently in single digits for the past few months. How can you scare people with daily reports, when no-one is dying. Next to no-one is seriously ill from Covid-19.

How can it be credible to still report 9,070 active cases when there have been well less than 200 cases a day since 20th January 2023, of an illness that typically resolves in far shorter than 14 days? Realistically “active cases” are maybe 1/5th of those still being reported. Cases from August 2022 are still being identified as active!

Promotion of Vaccine Uptake Using the Bivalent Booster as Lure

DOH strategy will be to require citizens to be up-to-date with the legacy vaccines and boosters, before allowing them to take a bivalent booster. That lure may not work: the legacy vaccines are already 3 years out of date. The bivalent boosters are also out-of-date. The strain they were designed for is already gone! Most people have lost all fear of the Covid-19 illness. DOH cried wolf far too often for people to take their pushing seriously.

DOH has announced that Bivalent Vaccines Are Due to Arrive by the End of March 2023

DOH has been announcing that bivalent jabs will be arriving in the Philippines by the end of March 2023. Is this real delivery, or wishful thinking by DOH? Or is the DOH hoping to drum up enough demand that the President may be compelled to endorse a special importation permit?

It now appears that the DOH cannot just import bivalent vaccines. Unless they can get special permission there will be no new bivalent delivery within March.

DOH Needs the President to Grant Special Permission for the Bivalent Vaccines to be Imported.

There is no longer a state of health emergency, since 31 December 2022. Under the EUA terms, following expiry of the state of health emergency, only on-hand stock can be consumed. No new products can be procured unless they have received regular approval, have a certificate of product registration (CPR). CPR have not yet been issued for any Covid-19 vaccines in the Philippines.

Vergeire admits that she cannot bring in ready for donation bivalent vaccines without special presidential approval. What she doesn’t admit though that DOH also no longer have liability protection. Will the President declare a new state of health emergency to allow these new jabs to be imported? Perhaps she was counting on the quick approval of the CDC Bill SB1869, which would have allowed her to bring in these vaccines and would have provided indemnification. However, this bill is being vigorously contested and is unlikely to be approved as quickly as she had hoped, and certainly not without some modification of conditions.

Another Shelf-Life Extension?

DOH are also waiting on advice for shelf-life extension of nearly expired vaccines. Yet another shelf life extension? That will hardly increase confidence!

Proposed Generous Donation of Nearly Expiring Vaccines to Countries that Still “Need Them”

The Senate assumes that other countries still want Covid-19 vaccines and proposes donation of nearly expired vaccines to show international goodwill. Given the growing evidence of harm, that may no longer be considered good will!

The Senate Blue Ribbon committee are concerned over the Safe disposal expired vaccines!

Ironically, the Senate is very concerned over safe disposal of expired vaccines. However, there is apparently no concern with delivery of these same products to the population. To date, still no questions at all have been asked over the excess deaths and dropping births.

Is DOH Correcting Vaccination Numbers?

I just checked the DOH vaccination tracker. It appears that 14.5 million doses of vaccines were administered on Thursday 9th March 2023! I am not aware of, though am enquiring from among my connections, any mass vaccination campaign anywhere last Thursday. Perhaps this is a numbers correction?

Looking further at the Jan 31 ‘23 Pharmacovigilance report dosing of each brand can be seen. Jansen product (single dose only) had about 7.2 million doses as of end of January (from pharmacovigilance reports). This may explain why the completed dose is higher than 1st dose [Jansen was counted as complete after a single dose].

The Pharmacovigilance report reports 170 million doses as of 31 Jan 2023.

The DOH covid-19 vaccine tracker reports 189,479,585 doses delivered as of the same date.

Which still doesn’t include more than 4 million second booster doses, also not yet included in the tracker.

Clearly there are major discrepancies in data being presented! This has implications for evaluation of all pandemic measures.

Pandemic Outcomes Must Be Measured Using Quality Data

Understanding of outcomes is only as good as the available data. Accurate Covid-19 vaccine dosing and delivery data, and health outcomes are needed. Every recipient is part of an ongoing experiment. Every outcome is important to evaluation.

There is very little data being made available. To evaluate, at very least we need:-

The vaccination status (vaccine type and administration dates) of every single covid-19 case should be known.
The vaccination status of every single death, from any cause, should be known and documented.
The vaccination status of any person diagnosed with a reportable illness should be known.
Population Health Outcomes must be closely monitored, reported in timely manner, completely, and with complete transparency.
All-cause mortality, including breakdown by ages
Registered births
Still births / neonatal/ early childhood deaths should be for close monitoring.
Maternal deaths should also be for close monitoring.

Investigation into the Vaccine Pharmacovigilance, Excess Deaths, Falling Birth Rates Required

CDCPH and other citizen groups will be calling for an investigation into excess deaths in the Philippines, as part of proper vigilance of this experiment.

Is the Senate Listening? I will update.