World Bank OKs add’l $300-M loan for Philippines’ vaccination drive

The Philippines is securing additional loan financing from the World Bank to further boost its vaccination efforts in a bid to safely reopen the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Washington-based multilateral lender said its board of executive directors approved $300-million of additional financing for the country’s efforts to scale up national vaccination, strengthen the country’s health systems, and overcome the impact of the pandemic especially on the poor and the most vulnerable.”

The new lending operation Philippines COVID-19 Emergency Response Project – Additional Financing 2 (PCERP-AF2) will cover procurement and delivery of doses to individuals aged 12-17; additional doses, as part of primary vaccination series, for at-risk population sub-groups, including immunocompromised individuals and senior citizens, who were not fully protected with the initial two dose or single dose regimens; and booster doses for health workers and the wider population.

“Fair, broad, and fast access to effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines is vital to save lives and strengthen economic recovery,” said Ndiamé Diop, World Bank country director for Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand.

“This funding operation is critical for the country to safely reopen the economy and resume economic and social development activities, including face-to-face learning, that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Diop said.

The World Bank said the new loan is expected to provide approximately 27 million vaccine doses to the Philippines, subject to regulatory approvals and data on safety.

The new loan will also finance primary doses for children under 12 in support of the country’s efforts to safely reopen schools, it said.

Diop noted that the new lending operation will also help the country’s efforts to address emerging variants like Omicron.

“Global vaccine supply market remains supplier-driven with many uncertainties for low- and middle-income countries. Hence, negotiating supply agreements with suppliers ahead of the country’s planned vaccination scale up in 2022 is a step in the right direction,” he added.

The multilateral lender said the latest loan funding came after its earlier financing of $100 million approved in April 2020 to help the country meet urgent healthcare needs to address the pandemic and bolster the country’s public health preparedness, and $500 million approved in March 2021 to finance the initial roll-out of the vaccination program.

The World Bank said that since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has deployed more than $157 billion to fight the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic, the fastest and largest crisis response in its history.

The lender’s financing is helping more than 100 countries strengthen pandemic preparedness, protect the poor and jobs, and protect the poor and jobs, and jump start a climate-friendly recovery.

The bank said it is also supporting over 50 low and middle-income countries, more than half of which are in Africa with the purchase and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, and is making available $20 billion in financing for such purposes until the end of 2022. 

Data from the Department of Health as of December 21, 2021 showed that a total of 102,988,677 doses have been administered, of which 56,509,739 were first doses and 45,284,617 have complete doses while 1,194,321 received booster doses.

The government is targeting to fully vaccinate 54 million Filipinos by the year’s end. — RSJ, GMA News