Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion has offered to help bring Covaxin vaccine doses into the country and possibly allocate the supply for small entrepreneurs.
The Covaxin vaccine, developed by India’s Bharat Biotech, has shown 81 percent efficacy based on clinical trials. The Philippines is currently in the middle of negotiations with the Indian manufacturer to obtain around 8 to 20 million vaccine doses.
“Once Covaxin is approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and our negotiations bear fruit, we are hopeful that we could offer these to our MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) that have not yet secured their doses from previous vaccine manufacturers,” Concepcion said in a statement Friday, March 12.
Concepcion expressed hope that the Covaxin vaccine doses would be delivered to the country by the second quarter, or around May, and would be “priced at the best possible minimum.”
“The private sector purchases from AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Novavax will be augmented by these new vaccines that will come from India, the Covaxin,” he said. (Genalyn Kabiling)
