DOH to use up existing COVID-19 vax stocks, will retain only 2-3 brands

The government is no longer procuring certain COVID-19 vaccine brands from other countries and is now streamlining the list of remaining vaccines that are set to be reduced to two to three brands soon, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Monday. 

Asked in an ANC interview if the DOH is pushing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to remove certain vaccine brands from the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to encourage more people to get vaccinated, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire explained they could only do so when the vaccines have received their Certificate of Product Registration (CPR).

“Meaning, it has finished and it has been evaluated that it can have this CPR. Once we have that and it is already included in our law for vaccines, then the EUA will cease to be authorized or cease to exist,” she said.

If this happens, Vergeire said the government will have a year to transition to the CPR.

“What we are doing right now is we are trying to streamline our vaccine brands whereby we are not ordering anymore some of the vaccine brands. We are just using it up, finishing the existing stocks,” she said.

“Moving forward, we will just have two to three brands in the country,” she added.

EUA is an authorization issued for unregistered drugs and vaccines in a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

So far, the Philippine FDA has approved the EUA for Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Janssen, Coronavac, Sputnik V, Covaxin, Sinopharm, and Covovax COVID-19 vaccines.

Presidential Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose “Joey” Concepcion III previously reported that about 27 million shots acquired by the government are expiring in July if not used.

However, Vergeire said in the same interview that only less than 10% of the total number of COVID-19 vaccines obtained by the government are considered wastage due to logistical issues. —KG, GMA News