MANILA – Those who cannot wait for their turn in the government’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination program can have their jabs with the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) for a fee.
According to its chairman and senator Richard Gordon, PRC will be offering Moderna’s vaccine at P3,500 for two doses. It will start when the jabs will arrive next month.
“Right now we will be charging P3,500 to recover the cost of our payment of the vaccines from Moderna but at the same time for our administrative cost,” Gordon said during a Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines forum on Monday.
“The vaccine procurement was quite slow. We have already ordered 200,000 Moderna doses, so we’re going to vaccinate 100,000 people,” he added.
The PRC has also ordered AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, but it is expected to arrive next year due to the influx of COVID-19 cases in India.
Currently, the government is only vaccinating frontline health workers (A1), indigent senior citizens (A2), and the remaining senior citizens and persons with comorbidities (A3).
The Philippines hopes to inoculate at least 50 million individuals by the end of the year to achieve herd immunity against the disease that has infected some one million people in the country./PN
