Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday credited vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez for having the Philippines included among the first batch of countries to receive the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) vaccines through the COVAX facility.
In her weekly radio program, the Vice President said she agrees with the prioritization framework and criteria made by the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG) that those who have the highest risk of exposure and death such as the senior citizens and health workers will be protected from the disease.
“Ako tingin ko, to the credit of Secretary Galvez na isa tayo sa mga unang makakatanggap na galing dito sa COVAX facility (In my view, it is to the credit of Secretary Galvez that we are among the first to receive the vaccines from the COVAX facility),” Robredo said, as she expects the Philippines to receive initially a total of 1,040,000 vaccine doses - 400,000 from Pfizer and 640,000 under the United Nations-backed COVAX facility arrangement.
COVAX is a coalition that includes the Global Vaccine Alliance known as (GAVI) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and is funded by donations from governments, multilateral institutions and foundations. It aims to procure COVID-19 vaccines in bulk and send them to poorer nations that are incapable of competing with wealthy countries in securing contracts with the major drug companies.
On Friday, British Ambassador to Manila Daniel Pruce announced that the Philippines is among the first countries to receive some 10 million doses of vaccines mostly developed by pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca in the United Kingdom.
Puce made this statement following the announcement by the GAVI on the first interim distribution forecast of COVID-19 vaccine allocations through the COVAX Vaccines Facility.
“The Philippines is amongst those first countries, meaning who could receive of up to nearly 10 million doses of vaccines; mostly of the Oxford Astra Zeneca vaccine developed in the United Kingdom,” the British diplomat said in a video message uploaded on his Twitter account.
Also in her program, the Vice President is hoping that the government would consider coming out with a prepared list of names of the priority recipients to hasten the process considering that the vaccines are “time-bound” or have expiry dates.
She also emphasiezed the importance of enabling the local government units (LGUs) to capably handle the rollout and delivery of vaccines, as well as actual implementation of the vaccination program, in accordance to the priorities established by the national government.
"Sana bahagi ng plano kung paano tutulungan iyong mga LGUs na walang capacity. Kasi hindi naman kasalanan ng tao kung iyong LGU niya walang capacity na sumabay doon sa mga ibang LGUs. So hindi pa klaro sa announcement nila kung paano ito gagawin (I hope that part of the plan is to help capacitate LGUs. It’s not the people’s fault if their LGUs are incapable of coping up with other LGUs. So it’s not yet clear in their announcement on how to go about this),” the Vice President said.