Parañaque City Mayor Edwin Olivarez vowed that the city government will make use of all the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines given to them by the national government within the month of May.
Olivarez made the statement following the President's directive to administer the COVID-19 vaccines before it expires or loses its efficacy. The President said that he does not want to lose the battle against COVID-1 9 "through negligence".
Olivarez, who is also Metro Manila Council (MMC) chairman, said in a DZMM interview that for Metro Manila, all of the 16 cities and lone municipality have no problems as far as the usage of vaccines are concerned.
He added that the allotment of vaccines is made by the Department of Health (DOH) based on the population and vaccination performance of each city.
"’Yun naman pong expiration po natin ay June 30 po. Yan basically ‘yung AstraZeneca lang eh kasi ‘yan lang po ‘yung mayroong expiration so iyan po ‘yung inuuna po sa atin (The expiration is still June 30. Basically only AstraZeneca has an expiration so we make use of it first)," he said.
"Ang logistic po ang magha-handle ng aitn pong storage pati ‘yung ating storage capacity doon sa aming mga vaccination center at dito po sa Parañaque kumpleto po kami sa storage facility (Logistics will be the one who will handle the storage and the storage capacity at the vaccination centers and here in the city, we are complete in terms of facilities)," he said.
For Parañaque City's part, Olivarez said they received 40,000 doses of Sinovac's CoronaVac, 24,000 AstraZeneca doses, and 5,800 Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Olivarez has mentioned that the city is capable of handling specialized COVID-19 vaccines such as Pfizer, Moderna, and Sputnik V after it made an agreement with Zuellig Pharmaceutical whose storage has a capability of up to -70 degrees centigrade. From the airport the vaccines will be brought to their storage and to the city's vaccination centers.