DOH tosses back to private sector expired vaccine issue

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) has questioned why the private sector did not make use of its COVID vaccines to boost all eligible economic frontliners, thereby avoiding vaccine wastage.

The DOH, in a statement yesterday, said providing first booster shots to eligible economic frontliners would have prevented the expiration of millions of COVID-19 doses.

“At the time these private sector-procured vaccines came in, there were 8.1 million working Filipinos – economic frontliners – already due for their first booster. This demand grew to as high as 14 million economic frontliners as of July 26, 2022,” the agency said.

“Even if all the economic frontliners due for first boosters were given their company shots in December, there would still be around 1.6 million workers waiting for their first boosters after all near-expiring private doses have been consumed,” the DOH pointed out.

Citing data from the Zuellig Pharma Cold Chain Warehouse, the DOH noted that beginning Dec. 19, 2021, the private sector received 12.4 million AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccine doses procured through government mechanisms. These doses, it pointed out, have expiry dates of July and August 2022.

At the same time, the DOH noted that existing policies allow private companies to explore other ways to utilize their stockpile.

“Chief medical officers of private companies may make their own vaccine recipient lists and implement steps that could expedite vaccine deployment and prevent expiry,” it said.

The DOH said that the private companies with excess doses have the option to donate them to the government. “Government policy gave the private sector an option to donate its COVID-19 vaccines directly to local government units (LGU),” the agency added.

The health department said it highly recommends that the private sector continue the established coordination with the DOH Centers for Health Development and LGUs regarding their COVID-19 vaccination strategies and plans, including utilization of their vaccine supplies.

The DOH added it will continue coordinating the process of reverse logistics in all levels of governance to ensure proper accounting of the vaccines.

Despite the private sector’s frustrations on the expiration of vaccines it purchased, Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion stressed the need to move forward and focus on the goal of keeping the economy open.

In an online town hall meeting yesterday, Concepcion said part of the 4.2 million doses of vaccines purchased by the private sector expired on July 27, while the remaining will expire on July 31.

“Despite some frustrations on our part, I think we should look at the bright spot. We have been able to reach this point, whereby the economy has totally opened,” Concepcion said, citing that almost every business is fully open.

“Tourism is back. You can see our restaurants, our malls, all of that are back as to what it was pre-pandemic. And this is, in a way, what we wanted to see. Now, the goal is to maintain an open economy,” he added.

The Go Negosyo founder had been leading private sector appeals to the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC) since April to allow second booster vaccination.

“The lack of urgency on the part of the HTAC and the DOH at which the vaccination advisories, policies and implementation progressed, caused the bulk disposal of these hard-earned COVID-19 vaccines,” Concepcion said earlier.

The HTAC advises the DOH on the health-related interventions to be funded by the government.

“We first sounded the alarm about low booster uptake in March, and about the expiring vaccines in early April. This could have easily been prevented had the HTAC simply listened and learned from the guidance of the CDC back in March when it recommended additional boosters for those as young as 50 years old,” he previously said, referring to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While he stressed the need to prevent the situation of the vaccines expiring again, Concepcion emphasized that nobody should be blamed.

“We are all in the learning process of this pandemic. We never encountered such an experience in our life and I am glad, at least from our point of view, we’ve been able to achieve what we wanted to, open up the economy so that everybody does much better as we face the next challenge of rising prices because of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. As we move towards a pandemic to an endemic, that is the next phase that we will have to prepare for,” he said.

Concepcion also expressed support for President Marcos’ pronouncement in his State of the Nation Address that there will be no more lockdowns.

“That is what we have achieved, and that is what we want to keep for the remaining years to come,” he said, stressing the need to keep on using vaccination as a primary tool to maintain this.

Moreover, he expressed the private sector’s hope to work with the government.

“We hope to really work closely with this administration and we really want to achieve what President Marcos has visioned – a robust economy for not only the large corporations, but an economy that is more inclusive that our MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) will be able to move up that ladder,” Concepcion said. – With Catherine Talavera, Rudy Santos