Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. has rejected the proposal of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III to recall the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines that were sent in the provinces with low number of cases and ship them back to areas experiencing surge, including Metro Manila.
"We have an equitable allocation in different hospitals. We will talk to Secretary Duque about the planned redeployment back to Manila will not be because we will have a double handling," said Galvez, vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, at a virtual press briefing Friday, March 19.
Duque reportedly ordered the withdrawal of vaccines in areas with low cases to ensure the steady supply in areas with increasing number of active cases.
Instead of vaccine redeployment, Galvez said that he will propose to Duque that the arriving supplies of COVID-19 vaccines this month and in April be allocated in areas with high number of active cases, including Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao.
If all things go according to plan, Galvez had said that the country will recieve 2,379,200 doses of COVID-19 vaccines this month to early April.
A total of 400,000 donated CoronaVac vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech will arrive on March 24 while another one million doses of the same brand that were bought by the government will be shipped on March 29.
Further, 979,200 doses of vaccines from British-Swede drugmaker AstraZeneca are also set to be delivered on March 22.
"Our recommendation is, just in case we tend to deploy more vaccines in Metro Manila, we will use the reserved supply of AstraZeneca and the arriving 1.4 million this March," Galvez said.