By Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza, Reporter
THE PHILIPPINES on Wednesday kicked off its program for bivalent coronavirus vaccines, more than nine months after the United States — considered as Manila’s most reliable ally — started giving the Omicron-targeted booster shot.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. attended the launch at the Philippine Heart Center near the capital, where 2,900 health workers were set to be vaccinated with bivalent shots from Lithuania, which donated 390,000 doses.
The presidential palace in a statement said the shots had been allocated to all Department of Health (DoH)-Centers for Health Development and the Health Ministry of the Bangsamoro government in southern Philippines.
The Philippines started negotiations to get supplies of bivalent vaccines as early as August 2022.
DoH earlier said it was in talks with the World Health Organization’s COVAX Facility to boost its supply of the new vaccines.
On March 31, it issued a memo on the management of donated bivalent vaccines, prioritizing health workers, senior citizens, people who are seriously ill and those whose immune system is compromised.
Under the memo, a person may be vaccinated with a bivalent vaccine at least four to six months after their last booster.
In his speech, Mr. Marcos Jr. asked local government units to encourage seniors and seriously ill people to receive the shot. “We call upon the local government units to bring those who are in the vulnerable category and encourage all of them to get these bivalent vaccines.”
Mr. Marcos, 65, cited warnings from health experts that senior citizens and people with underlying illnesses are highly vulnerable to new COVID-19 variants, including the Omicron subvariant FE.1, which was first detected in the Philippines recently.
“We must not let our guard down,” he said. “But rest assured that with the use of science-based strategies and a whole of society approach, these risks will remain manageable.”
Health Secretary Teodoro J. Herbosa, who was vaccinated with the bivalent vaccine during the launch, has vowed to secure more shots for the country.
On the sidelines of the event, he told reporters the World Health Organization-led COVAX Facility is helping the country secure two million more doses of the vaccines.
Bivalent vaccines are booster shots that target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the highly contagious Omicron variant, which was first detected in the Philippines in December 2021 and has since driven infection waves in the country.
A COVID-19 infection wave in the Philippines in January 2022 that triggered government restrictions was blamed on the Omicron variant, whose subvariants have also caused infection surges in different parts of the world.
The delivery of bivalent vaccines to the Philippines has faced several delays after a state of calamity declaration due to COVID-19, which set guidelines on indemnification and immunity from liability required by vaccine makers, expired on Dec. 31.
It was only in June that Mr. Marcos appointed a Health secretary.
While the Philippines only began the rollout of bivalent vaccines in late June, the US has already been giving a second shot of bivalent vaccines to some older adults and those who are immunocompromised.
The US Food and Drug Administration first authorized the use of bivalent vaccines from Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna in September 2022.
‘HEALTH SECURITY’America’s donation of COVID-19 vaccines was among the factors that convinced Mr. Marcos’ predecessor, President Rodrigo R. Duterte, to keep a military deal between the two countries.
Experts have been urging the Marcos administration to demand more from the US in terms of economic and development partnerships after giving it access to four more military bases under their 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement.
“In terms of the big demands of the Marcos administration to the US to reciprocate our mutual military agreement, the US can commit more on health security with the massive donation in the COVID-19 bivalent vaccines without saying much,” Chester B. Cabalza, founder of the Manila-based International Development and Security Cooperation, said in a Facebook Messenger chat.
“At the moment, the US will give us a preferential treatment for vaccine equity since we boldly expressed our military alliance with them,” he said, adding that the Philippines should also lobby for economic packages on energy, infrastructure and telecommunication upgrade.
Mr. Cabalza said the US had generously donated vaccines and other medical supplies to the Philippines at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and amid calls for vaccine diplomacy, “which were not vocally honored by the previous administration because it was hindered by its pivot to China.”
The US has vowed to donate at least 1.1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccine doses for global use before 2023.
The Philippines has received 33.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from the US. The Philippines ranked fifth on the list of America’s top recipients of COVID-19 vaccines, according to a November 2022 statement from White House.
Lithuania, a member of the European Union (EU), first offered to donate bivalent vaccines to the Philippines in January.
Hansley A. Juliano, a political economy researcher studying at Nagoya University’s Graduate School of International Development in Japan, said the Philippines should be honoring commitments to the bloc.
He cited Philippine environmental and human rights commitments under the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP+), which allows the Philippines to enjoy zero tariffs on more than 6,000 products or 66% of all EU tariff lines.
The GSP+ scheme requires the Philippines to uphold commitments to 27 international conventions on human rights, labor, good governance and the environment.
Mr. Juliano said the Philippines’ defense partnership with big countries such as the US should extend to the economy and its health sector.
“Our partners need not be just with high-income economies and reproduce quasi-colonial thinking in our foreign affairs,” he said in a Messenger chat. “Countries in Central-South America, Africa and South Asia are investing in establishing closer ties and exchanging good practices with each other.”
Mr. Juliano said the Philippines tends to “prioritize begging for funding, resources and mindsets from the Northern Hemisphere” while ignoring good practices and experiences from countries that “share the same issues us.”
“This is supposed to be the point of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), but the sad part is ASEAN is also suffering from this quasi-colonial framing of international relations, especially with how the mainland Southeast Asia countries are held hostage by China due to Mekong River access,” he said.
He also said the Philippine Health department should be able to make decisions beyond the president’s geopolitical biases “if only because health security has to be protected beyond international relations and power struggles.”
“The point of global governance bodies like the WHO is precisely to make sure that health resources, cooperation and standards are not held hostage by the big powers,” he added.