DOH urged to place orders for COVID-19 vaccines for children

The Department of Health (DOH) should place orders for COVID-19 vaccines for children or the Philippines will be plagued by lack of vaccine supply again, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said Monday.

Drilon made the appeal a day after the Philippines recorded over 14,000 new COVID-19 cases in a day, and with children now being infected with COVID-19.

"There is talk for booster shots or for the kids to be inoculated. I call on the DOH [to] plan now, because it takes time between the order is placed, and the time it is delivered to us," Drilon said in an interview with CNN-Philippines.

"At the rate we are going, we should place our orders for these additional vaccines so that we will have it by first quarter or second quarter [of next year]. Otherwise, we will be scrambling for supplies, and this it is a matter of life and death," Drilon added.

Food and Drug Administration Director General Eric Domingo earlier said that including minors in the COVID-19 vaccination program will mean inoculating 12 million to 14 million more people. 

The Philippines has fully vaccinated at least 12.1 million so far against COVID-19, but this figure excludes children below 18 years old and is far from the 76.3 million target of the government to achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 by the end of the year.

"There needs to be urgency in the way the DOH is managing our pandemic responses," Drilon said.

"The Commission on Audit itself said there is dismal inefficiency, lack of urgency, poor management and lack of leadership [on DOH]," Drilon added.

Drilon was referring to the 2020 audit report on the Health Department showing deficient spending of P67 billion worth of COVID-19 response fund, with P42.41 billion alone transferred to procurement or implementing partner agencies without a memorandum of agreement and other supporting documents. 

President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order 121 which allowed the FDA to issue emergency use authorization on COVID-19 vaccines on December 2, 2020, but the country was only able to start its vaccination program last March 1 this year.

An EUA will reduce the processing time for the approval of the vaccines for local use from six months to 21 days, officials earlier said. — Llanesca T. Panti/RSJ, GMA News