MANILA, Philippines — The national government is negotiating with seven pharmaceutical companies to supply the vaccines for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) across the country.
During the Senate hearing on Monday (January 11), vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. explained before the Senate Committee of the Whole that the government has prepared P82.5 billion for the procurement of 148 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
He noted, however, that the supply still depends on the volume that the manufacturers could provide in consideration of other countries.
“When we were negotiating we were very surprised that the vaccine makers were very very generous to us,” Galvez said.
“Alam nila na kapag mahirap ka na country may special allocation po tayo (They give special allocations to poorer countries). Now that we are on the final stage of our negotiation lumaki po ang volume ng (the volume increased to) 148 (million),” he added.
Given that volume of vaccine, the national government will be able to inoculate around 50 to 70 million Filipinos this year 2021, and priority will be given to around 35 million individuals age 18 to 59.
Meanwhile, World Health Organization (WHO) representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe explained that children under 16 years old are in the least of priorities.
“It has not been tried out in children less than 16 years for two reasons. One was the fact that the incidents of the disease were very low in children. It was clarified. There is further research in the future on whether children will have to be vaccinated but as of now that is not clear,” he said.
The WHO official expressed confidence that vaccines from Pfizer and Covax Facility of the WHO will arrive in the country at 40 million doses.
Novovax, on the other hand, will also provide 40 million doses while Sinovac and Gamaleya will supply 25 million doses each.
Galvez said once the supply is delivered in February, the government will immediately roll out the vaccination.
“With the indicative dates it might fall early or delivery will be late by 1 or 2 weeks. It is safe to say that we may be having the last week of February,” he said.
For his part, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III revealed the system of vaccination in the Philippines once the program begins.
Specifically, Duque said they will be very strict in monitoring to make sure the vaccine will not have any adverse effects.
“Ang mga pasyenteng ito ay magkakaroon ng sariling QR code at unique identifier na ipakikita sa araw ng pagbabakuna (Patients will be assigned a QR code and unique identifier that they will be presenting on the day of the vaccination),” Duque said.
“Sa pamamagitan nito, atin pong imo-monitor ang mga pasyente na nabakunahan ng first and second dose (Through this, we shall be able to monitor the patients from taking the first and second dosage),” he added.
Duque said the national government will also assign around 4,000 vaccination sites across the country where COVID-19 vaccine may be received, each vaccination site will have a duty vaccination team.
The number of patients in each vaccination site will be limited.
“To be exact 4, 512 delivery sites for vaccination sites and each one will have three vaccination teams and each team will have six members. It’s 300 per day per vaccination,” the health chief said.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), meanwhile, is expecting to approve the emergency use application (EUA) by Pfizer in the coming days, while AstraZeneca is likely to get the EUA approval in February.
“It’s a product that we’re using under emergency use. Kapag ganun po iyong mga kumpanya, hindi po sila nagte- take ng responsibility sa kanilang produkto, ang national government po will take responsibility for using the product that it’s still under development. Kaya hindi po nila maaaring ibenta,” FDA administrator Eric Domingo said.
DOH reported on Sunday (January 10) that the Philippines was able to secure a total of 30 million doses of COVOVAX through an agreement with Serum Institute of India. —MNP (with reports from Aiko Miguel)
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