Buttocks as vaccine site 'generally not used in adults' - US CDC report

A health expert said a vaccine injected in the buttocks should work after Malacañang announced that President Rodrigo Duterte will take COVID-19 shots in his rear that is why it could not be done in public.

“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, the doctor noted that those who have been vaccinated 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.

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.

Buttocks as vaccine site generally not used in adults – US CDC report

Meanwhile, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that “Subcutaneous injections are usually administered into the thigh of infants and in the deltoid area of older children and 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 site selected should be well into the upper, outer mass of the gluteus maximus and away from the central region of the buttocks,” it added.

In a press briefing Tuesday, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said Duterte would get the COVID-19 vaccine in private because it would be injected on his buttocks

“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.)