Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 12) — Losses from about 20 million expired COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to reach more than ₱9 billion, an official from the Department of Health said Monday.
“If we’re talking about around 20 million doses of these vaccines that were expired, we’ve estimated to have these estimated costs across all vaccines to be at ₱500, so 20 million multiplied by ₱500 would be more than around ₱9 billion,” DOH officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire told the House appropriations panel.
Vergeire clarified there were “no expiries” from the batches procured by the national government.
Breaking the numbers down, she said 6.24% of the expired vaccines came from donations and 22.35% were from local government units.
The private sector purchased the bulk, or 40% of the expired vaccines.
“For all of these which expired, these almost 20 million doses, there was this commitment coming from the COVAX facility that it will be replaced in total,” she said.
But the DOH official said they only requested “half of what has expired.”
“Because based from our forecasted computations, that would just be the amount that we will need until the end of the year,” Vergeire said.
In a separate statement, the DOH said more than 72.7 million people have so far completed their primary COVID-19 shots, and over 18.5 million received booster doses of the vaccine.
