Reuters
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is eyeing to increase its supply of COVID-19 vaccines by around 60 million doses to address to be inoculation requirements of the country’s younger population, vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. said.
In a public briefing, Galvez said the government is negotiating with vaccine manufacturers to increase the country’s vaccine supply from 158 million to over 200 million doses.
“Yung pediatric vaccination, may 39 million po tayo na population diyan. Ang implication niyan, we need to buy more vaccines. More or less 60 million (doses),” Galvez said.
(For pediatric vaccination, we have to cater to around 39 million. The implication of that is we need to buy more vaccines. More or less 60 million doses.)
“So ang ginawa po natin, ongoing po ng ating mga negotiations sa ating mga pharmaceutical at vaccine companies para at least mag-increase tayo from the original 158 million to 202 million, kasama na po yung COVAX [facility],” he added.
(So what we are doing is we are negotiating with pharmaceutical and vaccine companies so that we can increase our original target of 158 million to 202 million doses, including those under the COVAX facility.)
Earlier, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15.
Moderna, for its part, will be submitting its findings of its adolescent study to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators for emergency use authorization in early June.
Moderna’s study showed that the COVID-19 vaccine it developed was effective in adolescents aged 12-17 and showed no new or major safety problems in a clinical trial.
Meanwhile, Sinovac’s COVID-19 jab was able to secure Chinese authorization for the use of its vaccine on people aged between three and 17.