Some 3.6 million expired COVID-19 vaccine doses will be replaced by the COVAX facility with no additional cost, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said.
Duque, during President Rodrigo Duterte’s taped Talk to the People that aired on Wednesday, said they already met with COVAX representatives and requested them to replace not just the donated vaccines that are about to expire but also the ones the government bought.
“COVAX has a stockpile of vaccines with a longer shelf life. They will replace our vaccines that have expired–which is about 3.6 million doses or 1.46 percent of our total vaccine inventory,” Duque told Duterte in Filipino.
This 1.46 percent vaccine wastage is lower than the 10 percent indicative wastage rate used by the World Health Organization (WHO), he said.
COVAX is a UN-backed global vaccine-sharing program launched in 2020 to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines will reach poorer countries.
Duterte welcomed the replacement of the expiring COVID-19 vaccines.
“That’s nice of them to do that. That’s a distinct humanitarian sentiment,” he said.
The Department of Health (DOH), as of Monday, said more than 67.4 million people or 74.98 percent of the government’s target population are already fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Some 12.9 million Filipinos have received their first booster shot.
Meanwhile, about 1,900 immunocompromised Filipinos have already received their second booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines after the government started giving the additional jab to the vulnerable sector in the capital region, a DOH official said Wednesday.
Dr. Gloria Balboa, regional director of the Department of Health-National Capital Region, said they are looking into providing the second booster doses to over 250,000 people with weakened immune systems in Metro Manila.
“The immunocompromised are more vulnerable, especially against the variants, and that immunity wanes. Even if they were vaccinated they are more vulnerable,” she told ABS-CBN TeleRadyo in Filipino.
The Philippines began providing the second booster shots to immunocompromised people in select hospitals and localities in NCR on Monday.