MANILA - Theoretically, it should work.

A health expert has this to say following an announcement from Malacañang that President Rodrigo Duterte will take COVID-19 shots in the rear.

"Any muscle should be fine. Any big muscle. Whether it's the arm or the butt, it should work," Dr. Edsel Salvaña, member of the technical advisory group that advises the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), told ANC.

However, he noted that those who have been inoculated in the US got it in the arm or deltoid.

"Theoretically, you can use it on the butt. But unless there's some reason you have little muscle on the arm, the arm is fine," he said.

• Butt shot? Duterte to get COVID-19 shots in private, Palace reiterates

Salvaña, also the director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the University of the Philippines - National Institutes of Health, said the vaccines were developed " in such a way you want to put it in an area where the body can recognize them and have a good immune response."

"There are other routes, such as subcutaneous, never intravenous, where you can ensure the body has adequate response," he said.

In a report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it said that deltoid is generally used for routine intramuscular vaccine administration in adults.

"The buttocks should not be routinely used as a vaccination site for infants and children; and, to avoid injury to the sciatic nerves, they are generally not used in adults," it said.

The national public health institute said the central region of the buttocks should be avoided for all injections.

"The site selected should be well into the upper, outer mass of the gluteus maximus and away from the central region of the buttocks," it said.

In a press briefing Tuesday, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the chief executive would get the COVID-19 jabs in private.

"Sabi nga niya dahil sa puwet siya magpapasaksak, hindi pupuwedeng public," he told reporters.

(He said he would get the vaccine shots on his buttocks, so it cannot be in public.)

The 75-year-old Duterte, who has underlying health issues, belongs to the groups vulnerable of developing severe symptoms of the respiratory disease.

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