President Rodrigo Roa Duterte assured the public that the vaccines will be distributed in “the fastest [possible] way” as soon as they arrive in the country.
President Duterte, in his Talk to the People on Thursday (May 13), guaranteed that the deployment of vaccines will be immediately distributed especially that the increased volumes of the vaccine doses are beginning to arrive in the Philippines.
“We will distribute the vaccines as fast as they come to our possession. So ganito ‘yan, napipilitan kasi ako kasi lahat naghihintay. Pero ang sabi nga nila, hindi naman — ang sabi nga noon it came in trickles. Ngayon, medyo volume-volume na.”
“So, maghintay lang kayo because these things must be distributed immediately the fastest way that we can do it,” he appealed.
According to National Task Force against COVID-19 (NTF) Chief Implementer and Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr., the government is expecting 158 million doses of procured vaccines and 44M doses from the COVAX facility of the World Health Organization (WHO).
“Halos maganda po lahat ang negotiation po natin. At kung mapupuno po ang lahat ng ating negotiation, ang atin pong full doses is 158 po ang makukuha po natin sa procurement at 44 million po sa ano sa COVAX.”
Duterte reiterated that as the delivery of the vaccines to the country hastens, quick deployment is also anticipated.
“So iyon ang tandaan ninyo na mabilis na ang dating ngayon at mabilis din ang bigay natin. It goes without saying na mabilis pagpasok, bilis din tayo magpalabas sa inyo.”
He also reminded the local government units (LGUs) that their vaccination must “follow a certain line of action” since the different vaccine brands have different shelf lives.
“Kaya ito ganito, if you want a sharing of this endeavor, sabi ko, we don’t have any qualms with that. We know that you can do it but see to it that the mechanism, ‘yong infrastructure ninyo sa baba kailangan must be able to come up with the numbers required kasi itong mga bakuna, may expiry date.”
The Chief Executive asked for the cooperation of the LGUs to prevent vaccine wastage.
“So ito, kailangan ng handling, special kind of handling. It has to be — there’s a certain temperature that you have to maintain. Otherwise, you would lose out everything. It would lose its effectiveness…I am just saying this because I do not want to lose the battle here through negligence.”
Report from Mela Lesmoras/NGS-rir
