Hontiveros seeks Senate probe on COVID-19 vaccine wastage
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Risa Hontiveros is seeking a Senate investigation into reports that COVID-19 vaccines supposedly worth billions of pesos have gone to waste in the hopes that the government will manage and distribute its portfolio of jabs better.
“It is imperative for the government authorities to strive for less COVID-19 vaccine wastage, to accurately and transparently report vaccine wastage, identify drivers of wastage, and implement effective interventions to reduce it,” Hontiveros said in Senate Resolution No. 92 filed Monday but only released to media on Wednesday.
Hontiveros told reporters at a press briefing that while it is understandable for a portion of the vaccines to go to waste due to various reasons, she questioned why billions of pesos worth of the shots are not being used and are simply expiring.
“Goodbye agad sa halagang bilyun-bilyong piso? Mukhang magtatapon tayo ng pera at bakuna sa kabila ng mabilis nanamang pagtaas ng mga COVID-19 cases,” she said.
(Do we just say goodbye to billions of pesos? It looks like we are going to be throwing money and vaccines in the face of yet another rapid rise in COVID-19 cases.)
She added that had they known that vaccines would just be wasted, they could have allocated funding for aid for other sectors adversely affected by the pandemic like farmers, fisherfolk, drivers and other frontline workers instead.
“Napakaraming sektor na walang humpay sa paghingi ng ayuda sa gobyerno, tapos itong namamahala sa ating mga bakuna, magtatapon lang pala ng pera,” Hontiveros said.
(A lot of sectors are clamoring endlessly for aid from the government, and then the managers of our vaccines would just be throwing money away.)
In her resolution, Hontiveros pegged the cost of vaccines wasted from P5.1 billion, citing former presidential adviser for entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion, to P13.5 billion, citing Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon.
Drilon’s figure is a computation based on an assumption that each vaccine dose costs P500. The former Senate minority leader multiplied this by 27 million, the number of doses which Concepcion said expired in July.
A story by state-run Philippine News Agency in April quoting Concepcion’s interview over state television said the cost of the expired vaccines, mostly from the World Health Organization-led vaccine sharing initiative COVAX, is much higher at P40 billion in total.
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