Topic: donating 50% of the vaccines purchased to the government. (Read 459 times)

The truth is that the covid vaccination isn't plain and smooth in many countries, including from tier one, but the media in general only focus in countries ruled by right wing governments. A good example is USA which was constantly attacked by the national and international media due to the fact Trump was the president, but once Biden replaced him, this same media shut up, as the whole covid issue was instantly solved on that country.
I don't put my hand on fire for Duterte and it's pretty sure corrupt agents are profiting from the vaccines as middlemen in Philippines, but at same time I don't fall in the media's trap that make us believe only right wind governments are having a hard time managing covid pandemic.

I'm sure that we're in the same country and it's honestly so disappointing how the government handle the situation. Instead of helping the people, they're actually taking advantage of the situation. Lots of private companies want to help yet due to political issues, the government wouldn't allow it. Lots of people are dying yet they're still thinking of their own good. I'm trying to be positive that we'll survive this pandemic but I think corruption is making the situation worse.

It saddened me most when one of my countrymen outcry their voices internationally due to the fact that our government is too deaf to hear. Too many people are dying due to incompetency of our leaders especially the DOH secretary while other officials are having the best days of their lives in beaches. Furthermore, it is quite absurd to have this kind of agreement. It is clearly shown that all funds for the vaccines are out of hand and probably corruption is undertaking.

The government has a program for it. They are the only who can buy the vaccines. No one, no company is allowed but the government alone can buy these vaccines and this is for the purpose of transparency. The program includes "Bayanihan" Basically its about helping each other.

A big company contributes to buying some vaccines has to give back while the government had allowed them for this procurement.
There is no blackmailing there, these companies sign contracts and agreed to help each other before they buy these vaccines.

The employees receive vaccines and at the same time the government get some vaccines to provide for the people, in fact former Senator BAM AQUINO was vaccinated.

the problem is that the news media in our country isn't also reliable. we don't even know these articles are true. it would be funny to actually watch the news even the GMA or this inquirer saying something else than what was being published elsewhere. you'd be surprised that even the personalities from prison detained for drug trafficking are still published to these news media.


even the US can't handle this covid19. look how much homeless are there in US today because of the joblessness due to covid. if it weren't for duterte, there would have been war as well apart from covid.  i'm fine watching Manila Bay still.

But Duterte is really not a good leader in times of needs especially that all of his efforts are not enough to lead.

Vaccines in Philippines are not properly allocated and regulated because corrupt authorities are still doing their best to thrift the budget for the vaccine and get some.

Isn't reasonable if governments will have a fair price for the mass and for poor people? In this pandemic, does money and corruption still matters?

Hmm.. I heard that the Brazilian president (Jair Bolsonaro) turned down an offer from Pfizer to purchase a few million vaccine doses in 2020. I don't know whether the same incident happened with your country or not. But these are big blunders and now it is not possible to secure enough doses. Almost all the vaccine manufacturers are facing bottlenecks in their production and previously signed contracts are not being fulfilled. So any new contracts are not being considered for now.

The problem on how the government do respond into the presence of the problem in thr country makes a gap and become a main reason why the respond is taking too long which do also prolong the burden of the people. Incompetency and lack of proper governance might be leading the way why there is still no efficient resolve on the current state of your country's problem with regards to this pandemic. Although it is understandable that your country seems to belong into the third world making your government borrow a big amount of money, still the fund must be used properly and other methods to help lessen the cases must have been done not primarily depending only on vaccines and response must have already been done at early stage.

That's the problem, the stupid government is so incompetent that they didn't get the first batch of vaccine knowing the fact that they are limited since the production isn't polished yet. I wouldn't necessarily say that my country has difficulty because the pharmaceutical companies were the ones that approached and all they need is a simple paper of authorization and they didn't do it.

I don't know which country you are living in, so I can't really comment on the other issue. But as far as the vaccine availability is concerned, only a handful of the countries have been able to secure enough volume of vaccines to inoculate a large part of the population. More than 95% of the countries have faced difficulty in sourcing the vaccines. Obviously the Chinese vaccines are available, but they are extremely ineffective, as seen from the case with Chile, Serbia and Hungary. 

Since the very beginning of the Covid spread in mainland China, the PH already failed to control the entry of foreign flights. I am also one of the people who doesn't believe that all sorts of these quarantines were effective. Government agencies has been monetizing the situation, that even the national healthcare system are the ones orchestrating the whole corruption.
I'm so sick of hearing all these Covid vaccines stuff. The government of the PH for sure will have their opportunity to steal money from the people again.

If you are living in my country you will know what I am talking about, the blatant corruption and persecution of political opponents and the incompetence, why wouldn't you blame that? The government is supposed to be working for its citizen and not the other way around, maybe if people stop enabling this kind of mentality, maybe we might see some changes. And in regards to vaccines, my country hasn't received anything yet because they are incompetent.

The Ph government fail to handle this crisis effectively. Imagine its been over a year since the virus hit the country yet the situation is still getting worse day by day.

It seems the past lockdown which utterly affect the economy and the citizens are useless because we dont see improvement. There's already a vaccine but not all can get those due to lack of supply and they're prioritizing the frontliners (which is understandable).

They took a loan to buy vaccines but still has conditions to private companies to donate 50% of their purchased vaccine? I wont be surprise if these companies chose to closed down and migrate to other countries.

There is no point in blaming the government, because the vaccines are in short supply right now. A few countries such as US, UK and Israel have managed to vaccinate a large part of their population, but almost all the other countries have failed to secure enough doses for their population. Countries such as Serbia, Hungary and Chile went for the Chinese vaccines, but now it is clear that these vaccines were ineffective. But I will not blame the governments in these countries, because they didn't had any other choice.

Let me guess, we are from the same country? Because in my country, the government doesn't care about the people, they only care about their image and they want to benefit big in the vaccine purchase and people have compared the same vaccines to be used here in other countries and the difference are astronomically high.

There was hardly any other choice for the poorer nations. Vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen were hoarded by the richer nations and the supplies were not available to third world nations. Russia offered Sputnik V vaccine to some of the poorer nations, but the quantity that was available was very low. So the only vaccines that were available in good numbers were from China - Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino Biologics. These companies claimed that their vaccines are very effective, but now they are turning out to be huge disappointments. 

Therefore, I am very surprised by countries that provide their citizens with vaccines from China which are proven to have a very low level of effectiveness.
I agree that the government should choose the best vaccine for its citizens and not because there is a political agenda to sacrifice the health of its citizens.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a serious problem and must be handled seriously too, so it is the government's obligation to provide the best for its citizens.

Has anyone read the recent news, Chinese top control disease official admits the low efficiency of their vaccine. Now, this is really a screw up. How can you trust their vaccine if their top official admitted himself about its low performance? And what will happen if there will be bad side effects instead of protecting the person from the virus? The governments really need to think about which vaccine will be good for its people. Not because of some political agenda. I hope we all surpass this human trial very soon.

There's always something wrong in the system, if the government allocates and uses the funds they have properly there won't be any need to suck private companies' money requiring them to donate half of the vaccines they purchase to the government. The main root of this is corruption, some politicians are using this pandemic to their advantage. We are facing the same problem here in our country where Pfizer was not able to get approval because they were not able to contact the one in charge of the vaccine. The government wants the vaccine from China which has little efficacy compared to Pfizer. The obvious reason is they have a cut from it for every vaccine they buy in China.

maybe the government seek help for private companies because of how expensive the vaccine sold in this country but thats not fair on why the vaccine pricing are not equal ? what they think to your country , rich ? but 400 million seems large enough to accumulate the 10k cases of covid and they must start the vaccination now for christ sake because the more they wait the more the cases will grow and the funds are going to short .

I don't know why the OP is complaining. At least in his country, private purchase of the vaccine is allowed. Here in India, that is illegal. Right now, only those who are aged above 45 years can legally get vaccinated. Private purchases are not allowed. I know a couple of individuals who are in their 30s. They have comorbidities and health conditions, and they need to visit hospitals frequently. But at this point, they can't get themselves vaccinated (at least not legally).

A straight extortion from those companies that are planning to make their own decisions because they can't trust their government anymore. I feel pity for that country although it's acceptable that they must first cure the high risk places but the more they demand from bigger companies is like they were milking them instead of helping.

I wonder why they have to do it there must be a reason but the fact that it's overpriced compared to what they pay is I think a complete extortion.

If you ask me, this is straight up extortion and should not be tolerated and criticized. If vaccine manufacturers have excess supply from their expected numbers, if a private company wants to buy it, they should have the rights to do so with the help of the government WITHOUT any strings attached. It's already an initiative of the private company to vaccinate its workforce, and that's already a few hundred or thousands less on the headcount for vaccination on the government's list. This is the problem our company has been having for quite some time now, that's why our vaccination drive isn't really picking up pace. The Philippines is fucked from left, right, and center due to its ruling party and failed programs from the government. Hundreds of millions of dollars and still no clear plan on vaccination, and still asking for companies to chip in.

Our government is so f*cked up on handling the covid-19 issue. They have been requesting loans on other countries to help us aid the covid 19 which has accumulate of billions of pesos or even dollars yet the response and actions being shown to our citizens aren't great.

Companies are forcefully being required to donate half of their purchase of vaccines to the government is too much of a spoonfeed. I mean, they've loaned too much already so why requiring private companies to donate half of vaccine purchase. I even heard that private companies have another choice which they must buy their vaccine directly on the government but the catch is they must pay the overprice vaccine that the government has to offer.

Let's say only those front liner who really volunteered to get vaccinated are the ones done, people in the Philippines are hard headed they think that vaccine can make people to suffer more because of the social media already destroyed their minds if they knew the real story behind it maybe they will support it. The question is why people have a change of heart ? What they having doubt of the vaccine even they already knew that other countries are trying to donate some of there money just to have us a vaccine that can help those people who really are in need. They need to unite as one set aside about the politics and make a good plan for their own people.

That's so wrong. The governments should be worried about the health of their nation and give vaccines for free (and many civilized countries do so). What are we paying the taxes for? And, surprisingly, in countries where the economics is fine (because the government uses taxes properly and doesn't steal from people) and people can afford the vaccine easily - they still give it for free, because it is their responsibility and, once again, we are paying for it! There should be government reserves for such situations. But instead, not only they decide to sell it at a high price but also cheats by double-dipping. That is very irresponsible.

I think there is a finance in play as well. Pay tens of billions of dollars to build more places to build this vaccine and you are going to get excess amount of it, literally so many vaccinations that there will be 100+ billion of those by the end of the year. Which would be more than enough to vaccine people twice which is required amount, and even double that just in case. However vaccination has another layer of problem, actually doing it.

There are two problems with it, one of them is the biggest problem which is there is a limited amount of people who can do this, sure the number is high enough and we can do more but it is going to have a limit, we can't just vaccinate everyone on the same day, there will be lines for miles, so we spread it to days, but we could still get faster. Second one is the idiots who do not want to get vaccinated, and I don't know what to do with those.

therefore, in carrying out the vaccination program they either take from China or use vaccines that are intentionally sent from England. what we need to emphasize is that the government should not be too burdensome for private companies. with the exception of private workers have great popularity in the Philippines. meanwhile, the annual disbursement of funds exceeds the expenditure when there is urgent need to pay for vaccines from private companies.
In this regard, the policies Duterte should have implemented are still one-sided.
I hope that the minister of health in the Philippines must be able to act decisively and make decisions on the amount of funds that will be charged to each public and private company based on the level of popularity and annual income.

Countries are trying to get as much vaccines as they can. No country wants to stay with less then 70% vaccinated before autumn. But many countries will be such. 3rd wave that is happening right now will be hard. But to then also be hit hard with 4th wave in autumn will be devastating. 

If the vaccines bought by the government in your country are more expensive than usual,there might be corruption involved.Some politicians and government clerks will put a large amount of money in their pockets.
Private companies donating 50% of vaccines that they have purchased to the government?This is the most ridiculous rule I have ever seen.If this is required by the law,then it can't be considered a "donation".
This is more like a "vaccine tax",rather than a donation.Countries with corrupt governments will have a hard time dealing with the pandemic.

Yeah, put pressure on the companies that were basically making the job of the government easier and relieving much of the pressure so that they will simply stop vaccinating their employees and the government will have to pay twice as much, the golden goose story never gets old.


The richer country pays more because they afford and they want, this is how things have worked from the start of the human economy, the US and EU have poured billions in research for the vaccine, wouldn't be normal that the ones that did this to get the vaccine first?
Yes, people are dying all over the world from this but how could you explain to somebody in Europe that although we have funded all that research people in my country should get vaccinated after the ones who haven't contributed one penny? Would that be fair?


Hungary managed to do a stupid stunt for political reasons that backfired too
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/world/hungary-sinopharm-covid.html

Seems the government is putting too much faith in the vaccines, and even willing to borrow to get them. 
Well, I wish things like that (not the harmful or unsafe ones) could be traded for something else like products/services in form of Bartering between Countries and companies. I would have recommended making them free if millions of lives depend on the vaccines, but I don't expect them to be given completely free without hidden/unpleasant conditions or agenda.

The reason that they ask for private companies for the vaccination is because the government is too retarded to run the country, they have to worry about their political opponents before doing any pandemic measures and they are using the same 2020 method for this year knowing that it doesn't work anyway, and most of the money that should've been used for the vaccines was wasted on other expenditures. And the health minister is the reason why the vaccine rollout in Philippines is going to be late because he is stupid enough to not check the paperwork for vaccine applications.

The USA initially utilized hydroxychloroquine as an affordable treatment. Then reduced support for hydroxychloroquine in favor of remdesivir which is approximately 100x times more expensive than hydroxychloroquine per dosage (and some say far less effective as well). Donald Trump abandoning hydroxychloroquine in favor of remdesivir and regeneron anti viral cocktail is one legitimate criticism that could be made on his Presidency. For some strange reason, the criticism is never made.

One neglected aspect of corona vaccines is some sources have claimed they're only effective for 6 months maximum. Whatever the cost of a single vaccine dose, multiply it by 2 to calculate coverage over a 12 month period. With the long term cost being significantly greater as well. Such might represent a worst case scenario in terms of price. But there have been other concerns involving blood clots and other health issues. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I wonder if COVID vaccines could fit that description.

For similar mandates, the US government said it would fix healthcare through the affordable care act which forced businesses to provide healthcare for employees. The state said it would begin testing for corona during the pandemic before forcing corporations like walmart and target to do all the testing for them. The trend of governments claiming to fix problems while forcing the burden squarely on the shoulders of businesses and the private sector may have become normalized long ago.

state treasury funds have access to pay for funds spent on vaccination costs. however, we all know that apart from the incidents that make all Southeast Asian countries grieve, there are always parties who do not want to be harmed.

Regarding the Philippines, which tells every private company to be able to help pay for vaccines, I am not clear about it. however, as far as I know, the vaccination program is organized based on the request of the hospital which should be borne by the minister of health. as stated in the health regulations in the Philippines. and it is a constitutionally legitimate responsibility.

however, the health minister and Duterte did not want to be harmed by this sizable expenditure, so that they looked to a number of private companies to make contributions to maintain and stabilize all working employees.

So far there has been no further report on whether the stipulated funds will be reduced in accordance with the capacity of private companies and public companies that have a percentage share of the funds for the vaccination program.

Every country has a different way to buy a covid-19 vaccine, for its citizens which can be used for free.
Our country currently has vaccinated around 15% for people in government levels, especially in the health sector.

As for the budget used, there are several target forms of funds that will be used to buy vaccinations.
• (Ministry of Health and Health Social Security) is a factor in the source of funds to buy vaccines.
• (State revenue budget) is also a source of funds that can be taken to buy vaccines.
• (Economic recovery budget) is also a source of funds that will be used to buy vaccines.

For now, there are no loan directions to certain banks in the vaccine purchasing program, these funds have been prepared since late 2020, from new data for this year 2021 all vaccines are available and ready to be used for the people.
All vaccines that enter and will be used, including for the private sector, will be covered by the government.

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The $1.5 billion fund offered by ADB for my country, there is no decision yet, whether the funds will be taken or not in the covid-19 vaccine purchase program, but the ADB has agreed.

I don't really pay attention to the policies taken by my country's government in Covid 19. However, if you apply the same thing to private companies, it is not that bad.  My country received a loan for handling covid.  But allocated to where I also did not get the official details.  The fact is, in my country the people don't really care about Covid and what the public thinks.  Sick and die is the absolute wholeness of God.  So they only take refuge behind the faith in God without using their minds to try.

I don't really think about politics in my country, but what I know is that there is nothing in the word blackmail to private companies about having to donate to the government just for vaccinations, what is clear is that the government is now doing millions of vaccines to citizens, especially in government employees. certainly as long as the government can deal with vaccines and for those who can self-isolate it will be better than the vaccines that have to pay, so indeed in dealing with this kind of thing it is different in each country how their financial condition is, which is clear if only on private companies is not a problem because the government also has the authority in that matter.

I think it's important to remember that nobody is safe until everybody is safe when it comes to vaccines. The sooner we can come up with a solution that will get the vast majority of the worlds population protected, the better. The longer it takes, the more chance there will be for mutations that can evade the vaccines but this is minimized if everyone can defend against the current virus and the transmission rate falls. It is almost insignificant to talk about the costs and who should pay - every government should want every eligible citizen to get vaccinated and educate them why it is necessary. That way we can get back to some semblance of life like we had before the pandemic - frankly I look forward to being able to travel again with minimal restrictions.

A deeper look at the vaccination and the countries that have access to it is more political. Vaccination isn't suppose to have any business with private individuals but we have seen this kind of news happening. It doesn't show seriousness and some countries are being lockdown yet vaccination is slowed down from reaching the places. In Nigeria, it has also been political as officials find themselves as first to receive.

I don't follow political news in the Philippines...
But I do agree with you that Duterte's leadership has been criticized for a long time and he doesn't care about it like that. forcing private companies to donate vaccine funds looks like indirect blackmail and is likely to make things worse there.

Their target is most likely big companies who has more than enough to pay for the vaccination of their employees. It's those companies who can afford vaccinations anyway. Most companies will likely wait for free vaccination. Maybe $400 million still isn't enough for the whole population? so that's probably why they are still demanding more from large companies.


Are you talking about AstraZeneca? I think it's not only the Philippines who is suffering from double the price, other countries are too (like bangladesh, south africa, etc). Probably because richer countries are hoarding them. AstraZeneca is being made in the UK so it's much cheaper in there.


I think we already passed 10k already. I don't know what's happening but it also doesn't make sense for me that the covid cases are increasing daily instead of decreasing even though we already have vaccines available. Why are out government so slow in rolling it out? We're basically evolving, just backwards.

To be honest, Dutertes response to COVID has been long criticized, and so has been his ruling of the country, so I am really not surprised that they are forcing privately-owned companies to donate half of the vaccines to the government. It seems that he wants to dip his toes in both pools with extracting money from the ADB and extorting companies. But when you are that type of autocrat, anything goes.

When the government asked for money from the ADB Asian Development Bank to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, I found it odd that they were still demanding so much from private companies in my country. We know that people are without a source of income and that businesses are closed due to lockdowns, implying that they aren't making much money from the current pandemic. Now, some private companies are attempting to vaccinate their employees by importing vaccines that are much cheaper but there is a protocol requiring them to donate 50% of the vaccine purchased to the government.  

I also discovered that vaccines sold in this country are twice as expensive as those sold in other nations and that vaccines purchased by local governments would be given to governments in order to target areas with a large number of cases. Well, there's nothing wrong with prioritizing high-risk areas in order to reduce the country's active cases, but I'm also curious about how they want to use the ADB's $400 million vaccine loan. We are falling behind in the SEA since other countries' vaccine programs began a long time ago, while ours, not implemented and resulted in a slew of nonsense conditions that will keep the country behind in vaccination. Take notice that daily cases are approaching 10,000, placing us in the top two categories for most cases in Southeast Asia, and we are currently under ECQ (Enhanced Community Quarantine) for the third time, I believe.

Is there any other country that has enacted a similar mandate?