By Sweeden Velado-Ramirez
“Mutual trust between the public and the private sector” facilitated the private sector’s purchase of vaccines for employees, Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion said today.
Under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) status of all vaccines around the world, vaccines can only be procured by the government. For the private sector to secure vaccines for their employees, a tripartite agreement had to be made between the procuring entities, the vaccine manufacturers, and the government.
Such an agreement was pioneered by Go Negosyo’s “A Dose of Hope” program, through the partnership of Go Negosyo and AstraZeneca through its country president Lotis Ramin.
This tripartite model was adopted for succeeding private sector vaccine purchases of Moderna, Novavax, and Covaxin.
Following public confusion regarding the private sector’s access to vaccines, Concepcion said the government was instrumental in making it possible for the private sector to acquire vaccines for its employees and economic frontliners.
“When the AstraZeneca vaccines were made available around October to November, we had talks with AstraZeneca on how we can procure the vaccines for our employees and our government frontline workers,” Concepcion said.
“Knowing their non-profit program for the year 2020-2021, we told AstraZeneca that given the world’s limited supply, we would want to share and extend half of our orders for the government’s frontline workers.”
Concepcion added: “Without [Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr.] Secretary Galvez’s support, the private sector will not be able to access any vaccines. Secretary Galvez trusted the private sector. It was this mutual trust between the public and the private sector that made all of these possible.”
As vaccines continue to enter the country and with the private sector’s vaccine orders to start coming in by May, Concepcion, after discussion with Galvez, says they share the belief that allowing the private sector to mobilize vaccination for their employees would make the effort to inoculate the population faster and more efficient.
“The first batch of our order from AstraZeneca, the 2.6 million doses procured by our 36 pioneer company donors, will be coming in this May and June,” Concepcion explained.
“The bulk of our orders from the second batch of the AstraZeneca orders, to the Moderna, and Novavax orders, will be coming by the third and fourth quarter. Also, once the EUA of Covaxin is approved, there is a chance that 1 million doses of the Covaxin will arrive this second quarter.”
Yesterday, Concepcion said half of the first batch of their AstraZeneca order will be “donated to the government for its frontliners” in the National Capital Region (NCR), where a recent surge in cases has led to the creation of the NCR Plus bubble.
“We are recommending to Secretary Galvez and the whole of our government, together with Tessie Sy-Coson of SM Group and Ramon Ang of San Miguel Corporation, to direct the 50% donation intended for government priority sectors [to] NCR,” Concepcion said.
“We have agreed that we are willing to shoulder the vaccination of our company’s economic frontliners and those under our donation for the government. We in the private sector volunteered to donate half of the vaccines to our government frontliners to achieve our common goal of vaccinating the population as fast as possible.”
Read more: http://152.42.253.13/private-sector-to-donate-more-vaccines-to-ncr-amid-surge-in-covid-19-cases/
