MANILA - People who have taken COVID-19 jabs can still get infected with the virus, a public health expert said Tuesday.

"There's no vaccine that has a 100 percent efficacy," Dr. Lulu Bravo, executive director of the Philippine Foundation for Vaccination, told ANC.

"When they say 95 percent efficacious or 70 percent efficacious, meaning there's still that percentage that will not prevent disease," she added.

In a bulletin, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said building immunity against COVID-19 "typically takes a few weeks."

"That means it’s possible a person could be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 just before or just after vaccination and still get sick. This is because the vaccine has not had enough time to provide protection," it said.

Bravo also noted that COVID-19 inoculation could be affected by several factors such as lack of supply and temperature control issues, unlike those in clinical trials with controlled environment.

"Actually, even after you are vaccinated, it is important that we still do all these minimum public health standards. This is the way that we can prevent the transmission because even the vaccine you know can't really be guaranteed not to prevent transmission," she said.

"It prevents serious disease. It prevents dying from the COVID. It prevents from being hospitalized from COVID but up to now, we still are not able to get the numbers [of] how much it can prevent the transmission."

• Philippines to spend P82.5B to buy 148 million COVID-19 vaccine doses

The Philippines is set to spend P82.5 billion for the procurement of 148 million doses of COVID-19 from 7 pharmaceutical companies, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez had said.

Pfizer and Covax are set to provide the country with 40 million COVID-19 vaccine doses each, he said.

Novavax is expected to supply some 40 million doses, while AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Gamaleya are ready to sell 25 million doses each, he added.

The government aims to begin immunizations next month, hoping to inoculate 70 million people, or two-thirds of the population, this year.

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