The government’s bid to secure jabs against avian influenza (AI) and African swine fever (ASF) is stuck in limbo as it has yet to receive applications for product registration from vaccine makers, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“In our current database, we are not evaluating avian flu or ASF [vaccines], that’s why we are encouraging them [manufacturers] to [apply],” FDA Director Jesusa Joyce N. Cirunay told reporters in a press briefing in Malacañang last Tuesday.
FDA Director General Samuel A. Zacate said the agency is expecting at least one ASF vaccine manufacturing firm from Vietnam and three avian flu jab makers abroad to apply for registration based on their coordination with regulators abroad.
The FDA officials, however, declined to identify the “potential applicants” until they have submitted their paperwork.
“To clarify, we cannot proactively tell them to apply in our country because we have the zero-contact policy,” Zacate said.
In preparation for the application of manufacturers, Zacate said he created two separate task forces composed of different experts to fast-track the evaluation of their applications.
He also said the FDA will sign a Joint Administrative Order (JAO) with the Department of Agriculture (DA) to make veterinary vaccines more accessible to Filipinos and agriculture stakeholders and stop the spread of diseases, such as ASF and avian flu.
Last July, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. announced the completion of the initial phase of safety and efficacy trials for the ASF jab, which has an 80-percent efficacy rate. He did not mention the brand name of the vaccine.
Marcos said his administration will prioritize the procurement of the ASF and avian flu vaccines, which he said will be crucial for the country’s food security.
The Philippines continues to grapple with transboundary animal diseases that have caused spikes in meat prices in recent years.
Expensive food, particularly pork products, caused the country’s inflation rate to post a two-year high in January 2021, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Pork posted an inflation rate of 17.1 percent in January 2021, from 10 percent in December 2020 as the disease caused the deaths of hogs.
Surging meat prices have prompted the government to put in place anti-inflation measures, such as lower tariff rates on pork.
As for fighting bird flu, the Department of Agriculture (DA) permits the use of inactivated, vectored, and combination vaccines for the control of AI.
Under the DA guidelines, the use of the bird flu vaccines is not mandatory and left to the discretion of poultry raisers, according to the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture.
The DA has identified priority groups for the use of AI vaccines depending on their risk to the virus. The department also determined two types of vaccination:
protective emergency vaccination for areas with significant highly pathogenic AI (HPAI) and the preventive vaccination for areas that face significant risk of HPAI outbreak.
Under the guidelines, only the following avian types are eligible for vaccination: commercial layer chicken, layer breeder, broiler breeder, colored/free-range breeder, grandparent broiler breeder, small-hold layer/native chicken, duck, game fowl, turkey, and goose.
The following are ineligible to be vaccinated: commercial broiler chicken, small-hold broiler, quail, pigeon, and exotic birds.