WHO official assures PH will get Pfizer, AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines

An official of the World Health Organization (WHO) assured that the Philippines will receive doses of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines developed by pharmaceutical firms Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

“The Philippines is going to receive both AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines through the COVAX facility,” said WHO Representative to the Philippines Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe in an interview on CNN Philippines on Tuesday, March 2.

“The requirements relating to AstraZeneca have been completed... Having said

that, we are also informed that all requirements that the Philippines was required to meet with regards to Pfizer vaccines have been completed, but access to Pfizer vaccines may be delayed,” Abeyasinghe said.

The WHO official said that they are looking at how they can accelerate the delivery of the 525,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines. These vaccines were supposed to arrive in the Philippines on Monday, March 1.

“Although AstraZeneca was tentatively scheduled on Monday, this was not possible and we now believe that we will hear of a possible date... I don't want to create any expectations until we have a firm date. So when we know of a firm date and which we believe will be very soon, we will announce that,” said Abeyasinghe.

“The consignments are ready and just logistics arrangements are being made. So once we have a finalization and a confirmed itinerary of the delivery, we will share that information,” he added.

At the global level, Abeyasinghe said that they are facing two bottlenecks in the delivery of the essential vaccines around the globe.

“The (first) bottleneck that we are talking of was the manufacturers unable to meet the manufacturing targets because these are biological processes and they could not produce the quantities that they anticipated that they could early on,” said the WHO official.

“We are now seeing a second bottleneck that is the delivery processes because these vaccines need to be transported: maintaining cold chain requirements and logistic handlers are having challenges in ensuring large shipments of vaccines across the world,” he said.

“There are 190 countries who have signed on to the COVAX and who are anticipating vaccines, and now this is posing a challenge,” he added.

Equitable distribution sought

With the highly anticipated delivery of additional vaccine supplies in the coming months, President Duterte has called for the equitable distribution of the life-saving vaccines around the country.

“As humanly possible, we would like to, I said, distribute it among the Filipino people across the nation,” the President said during his televised address Monday, March. 1.

The President made the pronouncement after vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. reported that the country would receive 161 million doses of vaccines before the end of the year.

Of the forthcoming vaccines, Galvez said 20 million doses, including those coming from WHO’s Covax facility are expected to be delivered to the country in the second quarter of the year. Among the suppliers are Novavax and AstraZeneca.

By the third quarter, Galvez said the country could expect the arrival of 68 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. An additional 69 million vaccine doses will be delivered to the country by the fourth quarter of the year.

“All in all po, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, ay mayroon po tayong 161 million doses kasama na po iyong 44 million na Covax (All in all, Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, we have 161 million doses including 44 million from Covax),” Galvez said during a meeting with the President and other government officials on pandemic response.

Galvez, also chief implementer of the government’s program in battling the pandemic, also assured the public that they would implement an “equitable distribution” of the vaccines across regions.

Of the vaccine supply, Galvez said 130,000 doses will be set aside for National Capital Region, epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Other regions, especially those with reported increase in cases of infections, will also receive vaccine allocation from the government. (With a report from Genalyn Kabiling)