Address gaps in vaccination efforts – Concepcion

With over P5 billion worth of COVID-19 vaccines purchased by the private sector now expired, Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion looks forward to working with the government to correct gaps in the country’s vaccination efforts and succeed in preventing further lockdowns.

“We are grateful because of President Marcos’ ‘no more lockdown’ directive, but moving forward, we can do much better if we address the gaps and continue vaccinating to the max,” said Concepcion, a prime mover in the business sector’s effort to help the government’s COVID vaccination program.

“Let’s correct the gaps and move forward,” he added, citing the leadership of the Department of Health (DOH) as one of the gaps.

The former presidential adviser on entrepreneurship expressed belief that a lot of confusion and misalignment happened because consensus-building took precedence over urgency, particularly in the vaccines’ expiration.

“Having multiple committees contribute to the effort and trying to get consensus among experts is fine, but in a state of public health emergency, one person must make the call. The COVID pandemic was not business-as-usual. Time was not on our side,” he said.

Losses from recently expired vaccines purchased by the private sector would have been minimized if the guidelines were released earlier, particularly when the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approved it in that country, according to Concepcion.

“The HTAC (Health Technology Assessment Council) decided to allow second boosters for those 50 years old and above two days before most of our supply would expire, and if we were only given enough time, we could have done more”, he said, referring to the group which advises the DOH on health-related interventions to be funded by the government.

Concepcion earlier reported that 4.25 million doses of AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines were set to expire by the end of July.

He stressed that informed decisiveness would have contributed to raising vaccination rates, especially at a time when people were driven to get their vaccinations for fear of getting infected.

“The demand for vaccinations was high with the Alpha, Beta and Delta variants, and it started to slow down with Omicron. When people saw that the risk was going down, they became complacent,” Concepcion said.

Concepcion also emphasized that the country’s health officials should have built on what other countries already found to be scientifically sound.

“Other countries have already done the work for us; we should use these advantages for our people’s benefit,” he said.

“I would think that for US-made vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer, the most efficient path – without compromising scientific integrity – would be to follow CDC guidelines,” he added.

Nevertheless, Concepcion assured that the private sector remains in support of the government’s pandemic response efforts, which include promoting boosters to ensure that economic activities will continue.

The private sector purchased vaccines under the tripartite agreement A Dose of Hope, where half of the vaccines acquired are shared with the government.

“We donated as many as we could to local government units and did everything we can to encourage all the employees and families of the companies that were part of our vaccine procurement initiative to go and get vaccinated and boostered,” Concepcion said.

He added that the private sector was able to achieve within its ranks a high vaccination rate for the primary and first booster doses.