Galvez clarifies editorial, report on purchase of PPE for P20B
The chief enforcer of the national action plan on the new coronavirus disease (NAP COVID-19) said late Wednesday that the government intended to buy 11 million—not 3 million—complete sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) with the P20 billion set aside for the purchase.
In a statement, NAP COVID-19 chief implementer Galvez Jr. took strong exception to a report by Rappler and an editorial by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) that both referred to a P20-billion purchase for 3 million PPE.
“Not only was I misquoted, but the said articles also cast a cloud of doubt not only on the integrity of the national task force (NTF) against COVID-19 but on government as a whole,” Galvez said in his statement (See Letters to the Editor on Page A13).
“I would like to put on record that the P20 billion I mentioned during the May 9 interview in Davao City is not for the purchase of the 3 million sets of PPE alone but for 11 million complete sets,” he said, adding that the 3 million complete PPE sets are “part of the first tranche of the 11 million PPE worth P20 billion to be purchased by the Philippine government.”
He said the 3 million PPE sets “are being stockpiled for the months of June to August this year,” in line with the government’s effort to stock up on essential medical supplies and equipment until 2021.
Galvez also pointed out that the PPE sets being purchased by the government are “of level 4 quality … which are designed to provide full protection to our medical front-liners.”
Transcript
A review of the May 9 interview transcript shows that Galvez made his first mention of 3 million PPE sets (“Mayroon po tayong bibilhin na mga more or less 3 million pa na PPE, doon po sa China”) in answer to a question about whether a next batch of PPE was coming.
Following a question clarifying if the PPE sets were being procured from and not donated by China, Galvez cited a procurement that “I believe … is P1.8 billion,” adding that “another procurement” being prepared by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III would be worth more than P20 billion. (“Mayroon tayong ano, this is ano, this is procured, ano po ito, I believe it is 1.8 billion. Then ngayon po nag-prepare po ang ating mahal na Secretary Duque ng another procurement na more than P20 billion na PPE.”)
The next question, about the timeline of the purchase, elicited another mention of 3 million PPE sets from Galvez (“Ah ngayon po ongoing na po ang procurement ng additional 3 million na PPE.”).
There was no mention in the transcript of a purchase of 11 million PPE. It was not made clear that the planned 3-million PPE purchase was part of a larger 11-million batch coming.A report by the office of Sen. Joel Villanueva, released on May 13 (the same day as the Inquirer editorial) and titled “Comments and Recommendations on the Seventh (May 11) Report on the Implementation of the Bayanihan Act (RA 11469),” indicated that the senator’s office also had no knowledge about a larger purchase of PPE. The report used the same previously reported figures and independently arrived at almost the same computation in the Inquirer editorial.
‘Cost of PPE’ report
Specifically, on page 7 of the report, under “Cost of PPEs; Accounting of Procured and Donated PPEs,” the second paragraph of No. 9 stated that: “We would also like to reiterate our request for a full accounting of the said procured PPE. The [NTF] COVID-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. previously explained that bulk of the said 1 million PPE sets would be dispatched to hospitals from April 6 to 24, 2020, although past Bayanihan reports do not include update on such.”
This was followed by a bullet point with the text: “Comparing the two separate procurements, it can be observed that the PPE procured from China in April only cost P1,800 per set on average, whereas the batch procured this month (as supply for June to August) cost more than triple—or P6,666 per set.”
The bullet point was accompanied by a chart presenting the total cost of “1 million PPEs (for April)” at P1.8 billion, and “3 million PPE sets (for June to August)” at P20 billion.
The Inquirer editorial’s computation, based on 3 million PPE for P20 billion, is P6,667 per PPE set.
In an update on Thursday night, Galvez said the government had distributed over 1 million PPE sets worth P1.8 billion to 699 hospitals nationwide.
He said the PPE sets were purchased through the procurement service of the Department of Budget and Management, with the 3 million PPE sets expected to arrive in batches starting May 18. were bought at P1,800 to P2,000 per set.
“If we were to buy PPE sets for P400 to P600, we would be giving our health workers a wrong sense of protection. If you were those, our health workers would die because they would have a wrong sense of protection because these (cheaper PPE) do not pass medical standards. We cannot sacrifice the lives of our health workers,” Galvez stressed.
He noted that there had been a “great reduction” in the number of deaths among health workers since the government distributed the high-quality PPE sets.
