Razon’s ICTSI: Private sector to buy 2M doses of COVID-19 vaccine

The private sector, led by tycoon Enrique Razon Jr.'s International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), will be buying as many as two million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, which will be divided equally between government workers and frontliners, and workers in the logistics sector.

“As of today for up to two million doses to be funded by the private sector. Those two million doses will cover one million people, the vast majority of whom will be government employees, frontline health workers and other essential services workers as designated by DOH and of course, some of the other essential services workers like those in logistics as I’ve mentioned,” ICTSI executive vice president Christian Razon Gonzalez said during a Palace briefing on Tuesday.

Earlier trials have suggested that the vaccines are best taken in two doses.

Gonzalez said, “50% of this vaccine will be purely for the use of DOH under what is called equitable distribution to be determined by the government. The other 50% will be for the private entity to determine.”

“Naturally, one of the targets that we will have, of course, will be our own employees. But in the case of ICTSI, we strongly believe that some of the key essential services’ members that really made the biggest impact specially at the beginning of the pandemic were iyong mga empleyado ng Philippine Ports Authority, Bureau of Customs and other essential frontline port and logistics workers,” he said.

The ICTSI official noted that the vaccine procurement initiative is a “tri-party agreement” between the UK and Philippine governments and pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca.

“Under this, what will be a tri-party agreement, ang mangyayari dito is private sector will shoulder the cost not only of the 50% deposit for the AstraZeneca vaccine but likewise the remaining 50% once the vaccine is there which is expected now to be some time in the second quarter of 2021,” Gonzalez said.

He said AstraZeneca is offering three to five million initial doses for the Philippines.

“We, everybody in the private sector and the public sector through Secretary [Carlito] Galvez are trying to get more commitments to reach the maximum allocation that AstraZeneca is offering which is between three to five million doses, from what I understand,” he added. -MDM, GMA News