Philippines
Senate bet Herbert knows how to avert wastage of 27-M expiring Covid-19 jabs
Senate bet Herbert knows how to avert wastage of 27-M expiring Covid-19 jabs
The national government should immediately start bringing Covid-19 vaccines to villages and administer them to those who have yet to be vaccinated.
UniTeam senatorial candidate Herbert "Bistek" Bautista made this call Friday, April 22 in the wake of reports that at least 27 million vaccine doses are set to expire in July.
“There has to be a system to bring the vaccines to people instead of just waiting for them to show up at designated vaccination sites,” said Bautista, who is running on a platform of Internet reform, Livelihood for all and Youth development or ILY, and "Pagkain para sa Pamilyang Pilipino (Food for Filipino Families)".
The amount that would be wasted if the 27 million Covid-19 jabs expired without being used could run up to P12 billion. This is based on conservative estimates that each vaccine costs $9.
Bautista, a former three-term mayor of Quezon City, said teams of trained vaccinators could be formed and assigned to five villages each per city or municipality. The bigger the city, like Quezon City, the more villages should be assigned per vaccinator team.
“Deploy them to the villages instead of just telling people to line up at vaccination sites. That way, we can help create temporary jobs for the vaccinators and make it convenient for our countrymen to get vaccinated,” explained Bautista.
Department of Health (DOH) Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje, chair of the National Covid-19 Vaccination Operations, said there is still an ongoing inventory on the number of vaccine doses set to expire.
The government also plans to donate the jabs nearing expiration to other countries so they would not be wasted, she said.
Cabotaje considered it a challenge to fully vaccinate 90 million people before the end of President Duterte’s term on June 30. “We will study that with much difficulty,” Cabotaje was quoted as saying.
According to Bautista, the solution should be simple. He said he was aware that his proposal would entail additional expenses, "but compared to the P12 billion that we might lose, the additional expenses would be justifiable."