MANILA, Philippines — Dengvaxia can be useful in preventing future dengue epidemics, the Department of Health said Monday but it stressed the banned vaccine will likely not curb the current one.

“It could probably be useful for epidemics in the future. ‘Yung mga nagkasakit ngayon babakunahan natin sila para hindi na sila magkaroon in the future,” DOH spokesperson Eric Domingo said in an interview on CNN Philippines.

(It could probably be useful for epidemic in the future. So we can vaccinate those who have had dengue so they won’t get sick in the future.)

But Domingo, also the officer-in-charge of the Food and Drug Administration, said Dengvaxia will not likely help stop the national dengue epidemic.

“For an outbreak right now, hindi siya useful kasi hindi naman natin ngayon puwedeng bakunahan ‘yung mga batang hindi pa nagkaka-dengue ngayon kasi hindi naman natin alam na nagka-dengue sila before,” he said.

(For an outbreak right now, it won’t be useful because we can’t vaccinate the children who had no prior exposure to dengue because we don’t know if they have had dengue before.)

The vaccine has been blamed for the deaths of 142 people, although the DOH has said it has no findings that the vaccine was the cause of death in those cases.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier said the vaccine is not recommended for outbreak response.

The DOH declared a national dengue epidemic last week, noting 167,606 cases of the mosquito-borne disease had been recorded from January to July 27, with 661 fatalities so far.

The figure will likely breach the 216,190 cases recorded in the whole of 2018.

Decision on Dengvaxia

The decision on whether the DOH will allow the reintroduction of Dengvaxia—the first vaccine licensed to protect against dengue—to the market may be released within a week.

“In this case, the secretary [of Health] will decide. Possible decision is, yes, the appeal of [Sanofi] is upheld and your restore the [certificate of product registration of Dengvaxia] or uphold the FDA decision to revoke the CPR,” Domingo said.

Malacañang said President Rodrigo Duterte will listen to the recommendation of the DOH on calls to bring back Dengvaxia.

At the tailend of 2017, the government stopped the mass immunization program after Sanofi Pasteur disclosed that Dengvaxia may cause “severe dengue” if given to those without prior exposure to the virus.

Dengvaxia’s CPR was revoked in February 2019. FDA cited Sanofi Pasteur’s failure to submit post-approval commitment documents as the reason for the revocation.