MANILA, Philippines — Local government units can start administering donated COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility to indigent Filipinos if they have enough supply, the Department of Health said Monday.
“This is allowed, but it will depend on the supplies. If local governments see they are capable of doing it based on their allocations, they can do it. The guidelines are there, the pronouncement is there. They won’t be violating anything,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a mix of English and Filipino during a briefing.
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But LGUs need to manage the allocation of their vaccine supplies “so we don’t end up having inadequate supplies for other sectors of the population,” Vergeire added.
Indigent Filipinos belong to the fifth priority group for vaccination, who are next in line after healthcare workers, senior citizens, persons with comorbidities and economic frontliners.
According to the guidelines of the DOH, local governments should coordinate with the Department of Social Welfare and Development for the list of indigent Filipinos based on the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction.
LGUs can also identify other indigent residents though other verification mechanisms.
Priority may be given to poor people aged 40 to 59, followed by those aged 18 to 39, in situations where the vaccine supply is limited.
The COVAX vaccine-sharing facility has shipped over 5 million doses of AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to the Philippines. COVAX seeks to boost COVID-19 inoculation programs in lower-income countries.
Last month, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the distribution of Pfizer jabs to the indigent population.
Since the government began its vaccination drive on March 1, only 1.55% of the country’s roughly 110 million population have completed vaccination against COVID-19, while 4.26% have received the first of two doses of the vaccine.