MANILA, Philippines —The Philippines will contribute $1 million to the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility, President Rodrigo Duterte said in his taped speech that aired late Monday.
Duterte said this was a way of returning “the goodwill” the COVAX facility had shown to the Philippines.
“What COVAX has been giving us is a lot. Now in return, they’re short of money to help other countries, maybe including the Philippines. They’re asking for contributions so they can buy [vaccines] to keep the operation running,” Duterte said, speaking partly in Filipino.
“Because probably they are running low on funds already and they have asked the Philippines formally for a donation, for me that’s $1 million, about P50 million. We are going to contribute because COVAX has been very good to us at a time we need it most — one of the earliest agencies to help us aside from the contributions made by China,” he added.
The COVAX facility is a global platform aiming to provide equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, especially for low and middle-income countries.
It has delivered several tranches of COVID-19 vaccines to the Philippines, most of which are of the brand AstraZeneca.
The vaccine-sharing pool has also provided the Philippines with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.