Galvez: Vaccine deal may still be scrapped

MANILA, Philippines — Senators questioned yesterday the Duterte administration’s apparent bias for procuring China-made vaccines for COVID-19, which they warned has caused resistance to vaccination among Filipinos amid reports of low efficacy and high cost.

At the resumption of the inquiry of the Senate committee of the whole, senators took turns in grilling Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. and other officials of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) on the apparent preference for CoronaVac of the Beijing-based Sinovac.

“Just a word of advice: haste makes waste,” Senate President Vicente Sotto III, who chairs the specially convened committee, told IATF officials as other senators hammered on the recent Pulse Asia survey showing that 47 percent of Filipinos did not want to have themselves inoculated.

Like other countries trying to secure doses of COVID-19 vaccines to control the pandemic, Galvez explained that the government merely entered into an “advance market commitment” and no public funds have yet been used to purchase Sinovac vaccines.

“Is that a done deal, considered good (as) sold already? Parang done deal na ba ‘yan? Wala nang atrasan?” Sen. Nancy Binay asked during the committee’s continuation of its inquiry into the state’s COVID-19 vaccination plan.

READ MORE: https://aseanews.net/2021/01/16/headline-covid-19-vaccine-manila-senators-question-government-preference-for-sinovac/