27 million Covid vaccines to expire by July, Filipinos told

MANILA: Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose Maria ‘Joey’ Concepcion on Saturday said that some 27 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines are set to expire in July this year, emphasizing the urgency for Filipinos to go and get jabbed and, if eligible, get their booster shots.

“Let’s not allow 27 million doses of the Covid vaccine to go to waste,” the Go Negosyo founder said in a statement as reported in the Manila Times.

Concepcion has been pushing for mandatory booster cards by June to encourage Filipinos to get their third shots.

“Time is of the essence. This is why I am calling it out now while there is still time before these vaccines expire. If we don’t use these vaccines, we will have wasted the Filipino taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Concepcion pointed out that the country has recently breached the P12-trillion mark in its debt for the first time, primarily due to massive borrowing in the last two years for its pandemic response efforts.

“Both [the] government and the private sector bought these vaccines for our citizens,” he said.

The Philippines has borrowed P2 trillion, much of it going to vaccines.

So far, the country has received more than 237 million vaccine doses, with some 140.7 million having been administered.

As of March 22, there are 65,343,446 Filipinos who have been fully vaccinated, but only 11,629,565 additional or booster shots have been given.

This means only some 13 per cent of the eligible population have received their booster shots.

“We in the private sector bought our own supplies through the ‘A Dose of Hope’ tripartite agreement, and we shared these with the government because we know that vaccines are the solution to battling this pandemic,” Concepcion said.