GOVERNMENT SUPPORT WAS KEY IN PRIVATE SECTOR ACCESS TO VACCINES

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo Founder, Joey Concepcion March 24, 2021 - Folllowing the confusion circulating regarding the private sector access to vaccines, Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo Founder, Joey Concepcion, highlighted that the government was instrumental in making it possible for the private sector to acquire vaccines for its employees and economic frontliners. "When the AstraZeneca vaccines were made available around October to November, we had talks with AstraZeneca on how we can procure the vaccines for our employees and our government frontline workers. Knowing their non-profit program for the year 2020-2021, we told AstraZeneca that given the world’s limited supply, we would want to share and extend half of our orders for the government’s frontline workers,” Concepcion forwarded. Under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) status of all the vaccines around the world, vaccines can only be procured by the government. And so for the private sector to secure vaccines for their employees, a tripartite agreement had to be made. This is how the tripartite agreement model, pioneered by Go Negosyo’s “A Dose of Hope,” came to be. It was crafted through the partnership of Go Negosyo and AstraZeneca, with Concepcion and Lotis Ramin, AstraZeneca’s Country President, and this model was adopted for succeeding private sector vaccine purchases—for Moderna, Novavax, and Covaxin. "Without Secretary Galvez’s support, the private sector will not be able to access any vaccines. Secretary Galvez trusted the private sector. It was this mutual trust between the public and the private sector that made all of these possible,” Concepcion highlighted. "Secretary Galvez has a clear plan of bringing in 160 million doses to the country from different vaccine manufacturers—Sinovac, Novavax, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Johnsons & Johnson, Gamaleya, Pfizer, and from the COVAX facility. The overall portion for the private sector here would be around 15 to 20 million doses coming from AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Novavax,” Concepcion added. As the vaccine continues to enter the country and with the private sector orders to start coming in by May, Concepcion had already talked with Secretary Galvez and shared the similar belief that allowing the private sector to mobilize vaccination for their employees would make everything faster and more efficient. "Secretary Galvez and I are working to ensure that the private sector vaccine implementation will run smoothly. This is why the private sector has secured one of the best logistics partners in the country as this would be key in the implementation and rollout. In the case of the doses that will be coming from AstraZeneca, we have decided to go with Zuellig. Moderna will also go with Zuellig while Novavax will go with Unilab,” Concepcion forwarded. "The first batch of our order from AstraZeneca, the 2.6 million doses procured by our 36 pioneer company donors, will be coming in this May and June. The bulk of our orders from the second batch of the AstraZeneca orders, to the Moderna, and Novavax orders, will be coming by the third and fourth quarter. Also, once the EUA of Covaxin is approved, there is a chance that 1 million doses of the Covaxin will arrive this second quarter,” Concepcion added. ###

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