AstraZeneca, not gov’t, required private sector to donate 50% of COVID-19 vaccines —Galvez

The government has never required the private sector to donate a portion of the COVID-19 vaccines they would procure to its national vaccination program, vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Tuesday.

At a virtual Palace press briefing, Galvez revealed that it was pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca who required the private sector to donate 50% of the vaccine doses it will procure to the government.

The private sector earlier allocated some P120 million to procure 450,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for COVID-19, half of which will be donated to the government and inoculated to individuals to be chosen by the administration. 

“Para malaman ng ating mga mamamayan na nakikinig at nanonood, ‘yung AstraZeneca po ang nag-demand ng 50% na dapat meron po sa government,” the vaccine czar said.

[For the information of the public, it was AstraZeneca who demanded that 50% should be allocated for the government.]

The government’s anti-COVID-19 task force chief implementer said that AstraZeneca has a corporate principle on equitable access and non-privilege access, thus it required the private sector to allot a portion of the vaccines it will procure through a tripartite agreement to be donated to the government.

“So, it was [AstraZeneca], not the national government,” Galvez said.

Nonetheless, the vaccine czar said that other pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Novavax, Sinovac, which the private sector had entered supply agreements with, did not require them to donate to the government.

Currently, the Vaccination Program Act of 2021, which President Rodrigo Duterte signed last month, allows private entities, in cooperation with the Department of Health and the National Task Force Against COVID-19, to purchase vaccines for their own use through a multiparty agreement.

The Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) earlier said private companies can already procure vaccines through a tripartite agreement with the government and vaccine manufacturers, and there is no need to donate to the government anymore. -MDM, GMA News