The Philippines was eyeing to have 178 million COVID-19 vaccine doses for 92 million Filipinos, according to Dominguez.
On Monday night, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez announced that the Philippines intended to negotiate for 178 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that would be good for 92 million Filipinos.
In a meeting with President Duterte and other government officials on Monday night, Dominguez bared that the Philippine government decided to secure additional supplies because of the delays in the manufacturing and delivering the vaccines.
The COVID-19 vaccines, according to Dominguez, will be sourced from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, Johnson and Johnson, and Sinovac.
Originally, the Philippine government intended to secure 148 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to benefit 70 million Filipinos.
At present, Dominguez said that the Philippine government would have three approaches in vaccine purchase, namely through a partnership with the private sector, multilateral agencies, and partnership with the local government units (LGUs).
According to Dominguez, those approaches were independent, but they’re coordinated to have enough doses to vaccinate 100% of the adult population.
Under the multilateral approach, he said that the Philippine government would source USD 1.38 billion from foreign lenders such as the World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
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“This will fund a total of 106 million doses of vaccines with the value of US $1.2 billion plus we have 40 million doses of vaccines under COVAX. Our contribution to COVAX is only $84 million,” Dominguez said.
In addition, Dominguez said that around 146 to 148 million COVID-19 vaccine doses would vaccinate 76 million adults, which was “more than 100 percent of the adult population.”
The Philippine government expected the delivery of the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines this month.
Manila Bulletin reported that the government planned to prioritize health workers, the elderly, poor citizens, and uniformed personnel in the vaccination drive as soon as the supplies arrived in the country.
Priority areas for vaccination were Metro Manila and other areas that were heavily affected by coronavirus cases.
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