The Philippine government has signed confidentiality disclosure agreements (CDA) with 12 pharmaceutical companies concerning their respective COVID-19 virus vaccines that they could supply the country with.
Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Secretary Fortunato de la Peña said on Friday, Jan. 19, these vaccine manufacturers are among the 26 firms currently negotiating with the government.
“Out of these, there are already 12 that have signed confidentiality disclosure agreements,”
“For those who have signed confidentiality disclosure agreements, they will now be required to send their data that will be for evaluation of our vaccine experts panel and also the evaluation like the health research and ethics board as to their protocol,” he added.
Once they have passed the two panels, de la Pena said, then “can the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) act on their applications for clinical trials.”
“So far we have already approved the clinical trials of Janssen Pharmaceutical, also of Clover and Sinovac,” he said.
Among the 12, the FDA has already given emergency use authorization (EUA) to British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and American firm Pfizer.
He noted that the 25 pharmaceutical companies come from 10 countries.
These include six are from China, six from the USA, three from Chinese-Taipei, two from Russia, two from Australia, two from Germany, two from India, one from Japan, one from the United Kingdom, and one from Canada.