Philippines to shoulder payment for 5% of Covax's COVID-19 jabs
MANILA, Philippines — The health department on Monday said the country will now have to pay a part of the 20% of vaccines from the Covax facility with funding that it said is already secured.
Officials in a statement said the entire allocation was supposed to be provided for free, but government will now have to shoulder 5% of the cost.
"The budget for the 5% has been secured," the statement read. "Hence, even with these changes in financing, rest assured that there will be no delays in delivery of the vaccines."
Covax is a global initiative led by the World Health Organization to ensure equitable access among countries to vaccines for the coronavirus that has infected nearly a hundred million and killed over two million to date.
No reason was included in the latest pronouncement, but it was reported over the weekend that the country's share in the Covax had been reduced due to lack of funding.
"This is all for free," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said per The STAR. "But eventually, I think in December, they were saying that it seemed they can no longer achieve their committed 20% for each of the countries they made the commitment with."
Vergeire added that they had met with the Covax early this month, where they were informed that the facility would only be able to cover 15% of the population.
The jabs that would be provided for free are crucial to the administration's target of inoculating 50 to 70 million Filipinos in 2021 alone.
At a Senate inquiry on the vaccination program, a finance official told the chamber that the goal of 50 million could be met with Covax covering 20% or 22 million of the population.
Apart from it, government has sealed the deal for 30 million doses of Covavax, 25 million doses of the Chinese-made Sinovac and 2.6 million of AstraZeneca.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. last week said vaccines from the Covax could be in the country by February, and could include shots from Pfizer, which have reported 90% efficacy and had secured emergency use from local regulators.
It remains unclear as to the amount the country would now be paying for 5% of the Covax, with scant details given in the statement.
But for 2021, the administration secured some P72.5 billion in funding for vaccines purchase, which includes loans from multilateral sources such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.
The national government has so far secured two official deals for COVID-19 vaccine supplies in the Philippines, one with Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac and another with the Serum Institute of India.
Watch this space for bite-sized developments on the vaccines in the Philippines. (Main image by Markus Spiske via Unsplash)
Health Officer-in-Charge Maria Rosario Vergeire says the general population may now get their second booster jab.
"We're just waiting for the release of implementing guidelines, then we'll start rolling out our second booster for the general population," she says. — Gaea Katreena Cabico
Amid questions on vaccines being administered, the Department of Health assures the public all doses are safe and effective as the “process of extending shelf life goes through thorough stability studies.”
“The government ensures that every vaccine that is injected with an extended shelf life has gone through studies, and is still safe and effective against COVID-19,” it adds.
Government must increase vaccination capacity across the Philippines in anticipation of a surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant of the corona virus, Sen. Risa Hontiveros says.
She says local government units and the private sector can work together to put up more vaccination centers and deploy more vaccination teams to get more people inoculated against COVID-19.
"The active COVID cases have nearly doubled in three days. The positivity rate is almost four times the ceiling set by the World Health Organization. Huwag na nating hintayin na sobrang lumala pa ang sitwasyon bago tayo gumawa ng paraan para mapabilis ang ating pagbabakuna."
FDA chief Eric Domingo says that its agency has given emergency approval for the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
The United States immunized around 900,000 children aged five-to-11 against Covid in the first week the Pfizer vaccine was authorized for them, a White House official says Wednesday.
Roughly 700,000 more have made appointments at pharmacies, White House Covid coordinator Jeff Zients tells reporters.
"The program is just getting up to full strength," he says, adding most of the shots were given in the last couple of days alone. — AFP
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