The Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday said that the World Bank (WB), Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Health Organization (WHO) have committed to help the Philippine government with its Covid-19 vaccine procurement and distribution.
With the possibility of Covid -19 vaccines becoming available, hopefully by next year, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said that they have been discussing with national agencies and even the private sector to ensure that there would be enough storage facilities in the country.
Not only the multilateral agencies such as WB, ADB, and WHO will help the DOH, Vergeire said that the legislators have also committed to support them in the funding to hasten the distribution of safe and effective vaccines.
“But of course, pinag hahandaan natin ang storage facility so that we can be able to store as much vaccines that we would need, in order to distribute to the population,” Vergeire said in an online media forum.
She, however, did not reveal the needed budget to build storage facilities across the country.
“So, yes…nandiyan na po ang ating gobyerno at inaayos na po ‘yan [ So yes, our government is already there and we are working on it]. We are talking with various sectors. We are also discussing this with the private sector kung saan po tayo makakahingi ng tulong na ‘yan [ if where we can ask for help],” she added.
She also said that some of the vaccines may not need ultra-low temperature freezers for the storage of Covid-19 vaccines for there are vaccine candidates that are using existing platforms with a temperature of 2 to 8 °C.
The DOH official cited that Pfizer and Moderna, on the other hand, maintains the temperature lower than 40 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, the DOH reported that the total number of Covid-19 cases surged to 375, 180 after 2,053 infections were logged as of 4 p.m. of October 28.
Of the total number of cases, 10.4 percent (38,955) are active cases, 87.7 percent (329,111) have recovered, and 1.90 percent (7,114) have died.