Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion is urging the government to offer the second booster shot of Covid-19 to those interested as long as they are part of the priority groups A1 to A4.

Concepcion made the appeal on Wednesday after the Department of Health (DOH) confirmed the local transmission of highly infectious Omicron subvariant BA.2.12.1.

He said the country currently has 90 million available doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, and he believed that the most cost-effective and efficient way to use these is to give them to those in the priority groups who are willing to receive them.

The priority groups are frontline health workers, senior citizens, persons with comorbidities, and frontline personnel in essential sectors, including uniformed personnel.

"We have the vaccines, and like all vaccines, these are time-bound. We need a sense of urgency," Concepcion, founder of Go Negosyo, said.

"Let the individual decide if he believes he could benefit from the shots. There are already people who want to receive their second shots," he added.

Concepcion stressed that the country needs to stay healthy so it can pay for its capital expenditures and the debts it incurred in its pandemic response.

Currently, the Philippines has P12.6 trillion in debt and is projected to rise to Php13.2 trillion by the end of the year, he said.

"There is nothing wrong with debt, as long as it is invested in capital expenditures that will help propel growth," Concepcion said.

"But we need to maintain a good credit rating, and in order to do that, we have to stay healthy," he added.

To do that, Concepcion believed the government must "remove the remaining barriers so that we can put these vaccines into the arms of people who believe they need them."

Among the barriers for him is a priority group-based system, which restricts the administration of the vaccines to specific groups. Another obstacle is rising complacency among the population, given current low-risk levels.

"It's not like people are scrambling to get vaccinated. They're not. So why are we still imposing priority groups today? We are applying solutions that made sense when vaccines were scarce. We have so much supply today," he said.

Recently, Concepcion urged the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC), DOH's adviser, to apply the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines in the country's administration of second booster shots.

He made the appeal so the country could address the problems of millions of Covid-19 vaccines nearing their expiration date and speed up booster uptake and prevent possible surges of new variant infections.