Speaker Lord Allan Velasco on Monday said the national government should start reviewing the policy on Covid-19 vaccine procurement to allow the private sector to purchase directly from manufacturers.<\/p>\n
Velasco said giving the private sector a much wider role in the inoculation drive would sustain the momentum of the government\u2019s Covid-19 vaccination program in the country and enhance efforts to ensure the rapid and efficient rollout of available vaccines.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince there is now ample supply of safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines globally, it is time that the national government considers allowing the private sector to deal directly with manufacturers to ensure a more sustainable and dependable supply of life-saving vaccines for Filipinos,\u201d Velasco said.<\/p>\n
Pursuant to Republic Act 11525 or the Covid-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021, private companies and local government units (LGUs) are authorized to procure vaccines that have been given emergency use authorization through a tripartite agreement with manufacturers and the national government, represented by the Department of Health (DOH) and the National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF).<\/p>\n
Velasco said he is open to amending the law to allow private companies to directly purchase vaccines for their workers and their dependents.<\/p>\n
He is also amenable to devolving some responsibilities and functions in the Covid-19 vaccination program from the national government to LGUs.<\/p>\n
He argued that granting the private sector the authority to directly purchase Covid-19 shots will \u201crelieve pressure\u201d on government resources considering that vaccine procurement and administration entails a lot of logistical challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy granting the private sector greater participation in the vaccination campaign, the government can focus its resources on the inoculation of front-liners, uniformed personnel, and vulnerable sectors,\u201d Velasco said. \u201cThe amount the government will save can be channeled to efforts to help economic recovery post-pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n
He lauded the Duterte administration on the successful holding of the National Covid-19 Vaccination Days, where an additional 9.9 million Filipinos were vaccinated from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3.<\/p>\n
The vaccination drive will have a second run from Dec. 15 to 17. (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Speaker Lord Allan Velasco wants the private sector to purchase vaccines directly from manufacturers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"zyndk8_nxtgen_metadata":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/209995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}