Presidential adviser on entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion yesterday expressed concern the next administration might not be willing to procure more vaccines if the country allows millions of doses that have been procured go to waste.
“Aside from billions of pesos to be lost, vaccines available by the time people would want to get vaccinated or boostered will be very few as some of the doses have expired. The new administration will come in towards June, they might be hesitant to buy vaccines for fear this (vaccines going to waste) will happen again,” Concepcion told the Laging Handa public briefing yesterday.
He added: “The next administration might be more cautious given that we have a lot of vaccines available now and these vaccines are at risk of expiration or wastage and the fact that there are still a lot of people who are hesitant to take the vaccine and boosters until today.”
About 23 million Filipinos from the 90 million targeted that have yet to be fully vaccinated by June. Out of the 67 million fully-vaccinated Filipinos, only 12.9 million have boosters.
He added: “We are trying to save the vaccines, and the economy (which has been doing well) despite the Ukraine crisis that is affecting us in terms of higher prices fuel. But if we go to Alert Level 3 or 4, we would lose the momentum. Then how do we pay off our trillions of pesos of debt?”
Concepcion believes the Philippines can head off the 300,000 active new coronavirus disease 2019 cases being projected by the World Health Organization by May by ramping up vaccinations, especially among the 53 million Filipinos who have yet to be boostered.
There are around 27 million vaccines expiring in July and 53 million more in storage or a total of 80 million valued at P40 billion. Of the vaccines, 2.5 million were donated by the private sector and others by the COVAX facility.
Concepcion expressed concern that if people waited for COVID cases to rise before getting their boosters, it might be too late. “Why take the risk? We should realize the whole implication here.”
As of April 13, only 13.7 percent of Filipinos have received their booster shots; this despite 74.1 percent having been fully vaccinated.
