Budget for boosters: P45B allotted for COVID-19 vaccine purchase under 2022 spending plan

House Committee on Ways and Means chairperson and Albay Rep. Joey Salceda on Sunday lauded the government for allocating P45 billion under the proposed 2022 national budget for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines.

Salceda said that contingency funds for vaccines is crucial “because emerging research is beginning to show that in some cases, a third shot or a mix of two different vaccine brands may help strengthen COVID-19 immunity.”

He cited a research from Public Health England suggesting that two doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines are effective against the COVID-19 Delta variant.

“Research appears to show that Pfizer and AstraZeneca, the mRNA vaccines, are much more effective at fighting the Delta variant. So, we need to prepare to procure these vaccines as they become available,” Salceda said.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez also said that the Philippines has secured 171 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for 2021.

“That’s enough for herd immunity, but we need to ramp up vaccination so that nothing gets spoiled,” Salceda noted.

But to achieve herd immunity, Salceda said the country should vaccine 750,000 individuals daily. At the moment, the highest number of individuals vaccinated in a day was less than 500,000.

Meanwhile, Salceda underscored the need to expedite the turnaround time for testing of COVID-19 samples and to expand the country’s capacity to track new variants via genome sequencing.

“Turnaround time on average is still around two weeks. Of course, if you’re dealing with highly infectious variants, that delay presents the virus an opportunity to spread wildly,” he pointed out.

Salceda said the United States is now using a technology that allows them to conduct sequencing in just two days.

“Getting this done is also an opportunity to lay the foundations for the Virology Institute of the Philippines, which is a pet project of President Duterte and whose charter I authored. It’s part of the 2022 budget.” Salceda added.

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Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)