Philippines to get up to 10M of mostly AstraZeneca jabs from COVAX facility — UK envoy
MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos will be among the first to receive coronavirus vaccines from the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility, the British embassy said Friday.
British Ambassador to the Philippines Daniel Pruce on social media said the country "could receive an indicative distribution of up to nearly 10 [million] doses of vaccines."
Most of these doses, he said, would be United-Kingdom produced Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines.
Ambassador @DanielPruce shares the great news of @gavi’s announcement on the first round of COVID-19 vaccines country allocations, including the Philippines ????????. #VaccinesForAll
— British Embassy Manila ???????????????? (@ukinphilippines) February 5, 2021
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"The Facility expects doses will be available for delivery starting in the Q1 of 2021, perhaps as early as February, pending the Emergency Use Listing from the WHO," Pruce also said.
Aside from AstraZeneca, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. on Sunday said the Philippines is also expecting Pfizer vaccines from COVAX facility. At the time, he said the Philippines was expecting some 5.5 million AstraZeneca doses and 117,000 doses of Pfizer from the facility, pending global supply. This amount seems to have increased, given the British embassy's announcement.
AstraZeneca's vaccine has an efficacy rate of 70% while Pfizer's has shown to be 95% effective. Unlike Pfizer's jabs, however, which require sub-arctic temperatures for storage, AstraZeneca's doses only need to be stored at around 2°C, the standard temperature used in the country's cold chain system.
AstraZeneca and Pfizer's vaccines are also the only jabs which have received emergency use authorization from local regulators so far.
The health department also recently said the Philippines would have to shoulder a quarter of the cost of the vaccines from COVAX instead of the original commitment that they would all be given for free. The jabs from the facility are seen to cover some 20% of the population.
For 2021, the national government has an approved P72.5 billion funding for vaccine acquisition, which includes loans from sources such as the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.
Local government units are also making moves to acquire vaccines, entering tripartite deals with the national government and manufacturers. Under rules set by the coronavirus task force, LGUs are allowed to acquire enough vaccines to cover up to 50% of the population.
As of this writing, more than 533,000 have been sickened by coronavirus in the Philippines and over 11,000 have died.
— with reports from Gaea Katreena Cabico and Christian Deiparine
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