SENATORS on Friday pressed officials involved in Covid-19 vaccine negotiations to reveal the prices of several vaccines they are sourcing to finally quell speculation that the government is “favoring” certain manufacturers, particularly the Chinese-made Sinovac, which has been described as among the most expensive but with a “low” efficacy rate of 50 percent. At the resumption of the Senate Committee of the Whole inquiry, Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Sen. Panfilo Lacson raised the issue, with Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto weighing in on the matter. Almost all senators were keen to know this.
Endorsement based
NATIONAL Task Force against Covid-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito G. Galvez Jr., for his part, assured senators that vaccine procurement will be based on vaccine expert panel endorsement.
Galvez said that selection, procurement and administration of Covid-19 vaccines in the country will strictly adhere to the government’s stringent protocols to ensure transparency and accountability.
“Only those vaccines endorsed by the vaccine expert panel will be purchased. Only those issued an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] by FDA [Food and Drug Administration] will be administered. With regard to the prices of vaccines, we also want to assure the public that the negotiations will result in the best price available given our total volumes,” Galvez said at the hearing of the Senate Committee of the Whole on the national government’s Covid-19 vaccination program.
The Food and Drug Administration granted Pfizer-BioNTech an emergency use authorization (EUA) on Thursday.
AstraZeneca, Sinovac and Gamaleya have also submitted their respective applications for EUA.
According to the vaccine czar, the government’s “Whole-of-Nation Approach” will ensure that the government will be able to secure safe, effective and sufficient vaccine doses for all Filipinos.
Meanwhile, Recto recommended rearranging the Duterte administration’s Covid vaccine target beneficiaries. “We suggest that the inoculation priority should be given to health workers, senior citizens and teachers,” Recto said.
At the same time, Senate Majority Leader Miguel Zubiri lamented that senators had a hard time getting the Department of Health (DOH) to disclose the cost of the vaccine, but were eventually told it amounts to P240 per dose.
The senators were keen to know first hand from vaccine czar Secretary Galvez the various quotations received by the government, as they questioned repeated claims that prices are part of the nondisclosure agreements Philippine officials signed with manufacturers.
Lawmakers’ effort at transparency gained currency after Presidential Adviser Joey Concepcion III confirmed that AstraZeneca—which several local government units and private firms had sourced vaccines from—was giving vaccine doses at a low price of 5 dollars each, or about P500 for the required two doses per person.
Concepcion said while the price is indeed confidential, “it’s been reported all over the place anyway.”
Before the hearing, Senate President Sotto was asked on CNN Philippines’s “The Source” if he would raise the matter of vaccine pricing, with Pinky Webb noting that Presidential spokesman Harry Roque had said “it was not the most expensive, it was actually among the middle of the six vaccines that could be made available here in the country.”
To this, Sotto said: “That’s why, if it is not the most expensive, how much is it? Why don’t you tell us? Because it is the people, let me be very blunt about this, it is the people who are worried. It is not us, it is not the Senate, so for those who are criticizing us for calling these hearings, please know that it is the public that wants this. They want to be clarified; they want to know more.”
Noting that prices are “found on the Internet,” Sotto said the matter of prices should not be confidential.
“And now that there are other vaccines that are available, let’s make it all available, let’s make them all available,” the Senate President stressed.
Sotto also wants the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) to explain the over-reliance on vaccines, and seeming low priority for medication.
“There are two or three countries that I have heard who are not afraid of whether they have a vaccine or not, because they found the medicine to cure. It’s like, if you have a cough or cold, or fever, there’s a cure for that…How are we into also finding a medical cure, not just a vaccine because the vaccine will last how long, six months? One year? Thereafter, what happens, we must be inoculated again?”
Cold-chain issue
On the matter of the cold-chain network that needs to be set up to ensure the safe and reliable transportation and distribution of vaccines across the land, Senator Nancy Binay was taken aback by the insistence of Health Secretary Francisco Duque III—supported by Galvez—to limit their negotiations to “pharma-grade” cold-chain providers, ignoring the big facility network already in place under the Cold Chain Association of the Philippines (CCAP).
The CCAP president, Anthony Dizon, who was at the hearing, said their group had reached out to DOH several months ago, but despite repeated inquiries, got no response.
“How can we prepare to assist government if we haven’t been given any guidance on what exactly government needs?” Dizon said, in reply to Binay. “We just need to know” if the group is going to be brought in by the government, he added.
“We need here pharma-grade cold chain” services, Duque explained, in reply to Binay, and listed several companies the DOH is already talking to: Zuellig, Unilab, Orca, Royal Cargo, Metropak, among others.
The CCAP had earlier told the BusinessMirror in interviews that even though most of them are providing agriculture or food-grade cold-chain services, many of their members have facilities that can be used even for pharma-grade operations.
Binay pointed out to Duque and Galvez that, while they are talking to those pharma-grade cold-chain firms, there are players in the agriculture-grade cold-chain outlets willing and ready to shift to pharma grade, given the right guidance, “so why aren’t we talking to them yet?” She said that, since these CCAP members are well dispersed, they could be tapped to fill in gaps in the cold chain, especially for hard-to-reach areas. Otherwise, she said, those in remote areas which DOH’s cold-chain partners might have difficulty reaching might have low priority in inoculation, “raising the issue of equity.”
Binay also pressed Duque to provide details of the information technology aspects of the vaccine road map, noting that with such a “massive operation,” there’s need to have the technology to constantly track, say sources of vaccine batches in case adverse reactions are reported from parts of the archipelago.
Duque replied they are setting up a Covid Immunization Electronic Registry, and a “dashboard to monitor end-to-end supply systems.” Vaccinees’ experience will be tracked from pre- to post-inoculation, he said.
With Claudeth Mocon-Ciriaco