Philippines secures 20 million doses of Moderna vaccine in deal with private sector
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has secured 20 million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in a tripartite deal with the United States biotech company and the private sector.
The Philippine government, represented by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., and the private sector, represented by International Container Terminals Services, Inc. chairman Enrique Razon, inked Thursday a deal to procure the vaccines.
Under the agreement, the government will be getting 13 million doses of the vaccine, while the private sector would receive the remaining seven million doses which it will use for its frontline workers.
It is not clear when these vaccines will arrive, although Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez previously indicated that some 20 million doses of Moderna’s jabs would arrive by the end of May or early June.
Taken in two doses, Moderna has reported a 94% efficacy rate for its candidate vaccine and was approved for emergency use by US regulators in late 2020.
The Philippines is targeting to secure enough vaccine doses from different manufacturers to cover 70 million of its 108 million population to achieve herd immunity and roll back coronavirus restrictions that plunged its economy to its lowest on record.
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The country, however, has yet to receive a single vaccine dose it purchased as the vaccines it has received so far have only come from donations from China and the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility.
The country’s vaccination program has also been criticized for its slow pace, with only 269,593 medical frontliners and health workers getting inoculated more than a month since it started.
The Philippines has one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia and is seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases in recent days.
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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