The United States expressed its commitment to give the Philippines access to COVID-19 vaccines after American pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna reported positive results from its late-stage vaccine trial.
Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. about the US’ commitment to vaccine access.
“We have firm commitments from the United States,” Roque told a news conference in Cagayan.
Roque added said China also vowed to supply the Philippines with vaccines while British drugmaker AstraZeneca had promised to give doses for developing countries.
Moderna Inc announced its vaccine was 94.5% effective in a preliminary analysis of a large late-stage clinical trial.
Noubar Afeyan, Moderna co-founder and chairman, discusses the company’s new data, distribution, plan for emergency use authorization, and its advantage over a vaccine by Pfizer Inc. in an interview with Bloomberg.
“In a trial of 30,000 subjects, where we already received some 95 cases of infections. In those, 90 of them were in the population that did not receive the vaccine, and only five were the only infections that did. That is where the 94.5 percent protection comes from,” said Afeyan.
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US commits to giving Philippines vaccine access
He added that if that scale translates to millions of people, the Moderna vaccine would save lives and prevent severe respiratory disease cases.
When asked for the next steps and when Moderna could file for emergency use of the vaccine, Afeyan said they are closely coordinated with the regulatory bodies and the Food and Drug Administration. He added they hope to distribute the vaccine by early December.
Last week, Pfizer announced that its COVID-19 vaccine is over 90 percent effective.
As a response, Malacañang said there is a good chance that the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech would be approved immediately for “emergency use in the Philippines.”
“Kapag na-approve na ng US FDA (Food and Drug Administration), European FDA, it is almost… it will not take time to approve the emergency use of this vaccine,” said Harry Roque.
“But it is not automatic, kailangan pa rin ng some review iyan,” he added.