Christmas Campaign Targeting Children. How Much Did Your Jab Cost? DOH 2021 COVID-19 Campaigns Budget was PHP625.1 (USD10.5) Million. Commision on Audit Investigating Vaccine Contracts & Expenditure.

Commission on Audit starts the onerous task of determining direct expenditures, costs, and accountability for the vaccination program. Costs to the Philippines will go well beyond just fiscal!

The message from DOH is that Christmas is a time to take the safe, effective, and free Covid-19 vaccines to ensure a strong and joyous Christmas Season with one’s loved ones. Toolkit information is provided, here. Along with promotional and education materials.

The latest campaign will be held from 5 - 7 December 2022 and will target children, and delivery of first booster doses.

DepED has issued a Department Order Covering this activity. Note point 2. that minors who want to be vaccinated but who haven’t obtained consent of their parents or legal guardians should seek assistance from DSWD social workers. Meaning parents / legal guardians can be bypassed?

While persons receiving vaccines can be excused from attendance on their day of vaccination if they present proof of vaccine received, Government schools will be not be used as vaccination centers.

It will be interesting to see the uptake during this new drive, considering that most Filipinos seem no longer enthusiastic to be jabbed.

Uptake continues to drop by the day! The 7-day average last 21 November 2022 of 28,611 had dropped to 21,630 doses / day by 29 November 2022.

How Much Did Your Vaccine Cost?

We don’t know the costs of the Covid-19 vaccines, direct or indirect. This has not been disclosed to the Filipino Public, nor to the Government. We suspect it stretches into hundreds of billions, likely trillions.

We can start to identify some of the costs. The DOH 2021 Covid-19 and Covid-19 Vaccine Campaigns Budget Allocation was released under FOI request! In 2021 DOH had a total marketing budget of PHP625,115,034.37 (USD10,595,170.08 @ ER of USD1:PHP59). Final confirmation of dispersement of regional funds is still pending.

In 2021 DOH delivered 108,728,746 Doses of Covid-19 Vaccines (Source). The marketing cost for each of these delivered doses was effectively PHP5.75 / dose. 2022 data is not released!

No Release of Phamacovigilance Budget

The budget for the vaccine pharmacovigilance has been requested last September 2022 under the FOI system but has not been released to date.

No Identification of Direct and Indirect Costs

The direct expenditure for and cost of the COVID-19 vaccines includes procurement, storage, handling, delivery, and administration.

Additional costs include the marketing campaigns such as that just described.

Then there are the social amelioration costs. Auyda! The financial support given to people out of work and disadvantaged by the pandemic measures.

Lost education will have multigenerational effects. Social scientists have means to quantify lost education in terms of increased poverty and life years lost. I have not seen any such discussion for the Philippines.

There have also been lost opportunity costs, very challenging to quantify, which include those of the personnel dedicated to all levels of vaccine delivery who were pulled from their normal productive work. Vaccine recipients are also pulled from their normal activities to attend vaccination sites. If they become ill (or worse) following vaccination, even temporarily, there is lost productivity and income.

The current hospitalization rate is 4.24/ 100,000 doses. That also needed to be paid for. In the Philippines hospitalization is not free. Costs must first be covered by the patient and may or may not be reimbursable by PhilHealth. Hospitalization costs can push a family from surviving into poverty! There are many local stories of family assets having to be sold / education of children halted to cover incurred medical costs.

All of the expenditure on Covid-19 has meant lost opportunities for expenditure of funds on programs, projects and infrastructure that could have given far better return to the people, their communities and the country than the unrelenting focus almost solely on an experimental injection that has not delivered! That did not prevent transmission, or infection, or hospitalization or death! Measures that have disrupted business, halted education, interrupted work, impoverished so many and set the country’s development back likely decades! The human costs will reverberate for generations.

Commission on Audit (COA) Investigating Vaccine Procurement

Filipinos have been repeatedly told by DOH that their Covid-19 Vaccines are free.

Assuredly they were never free, and the many costs will ultimately be borne by taxpayers. For generations!

Philippines was able to receive some free vaccines under the COVAX programme. However, this only provided as small % of the total covid-19 vaccines received.

The rest of the vaccines needed to be purchased. This was done with the assistance of various loans. The scope, obligations entailed, and amounts of these loans have not been disclosed.

The Philippines Congress knows that when large sums of money are involved, there are large opportunities for vested parties.

Disclosure of vaccine costs, and details of contracts, may finally come via COA which are now actively investigating the vaccine agreements and procurement.

Special Audit on Vaccine Procurement and Expenditure related to loans is also being required. The true direct costs are going to start to be revealed!

The costs may finally start being brought to light! Disbelief, shock and horror, and a keen sense of betrayal of the people by the government entrusted to protect and assist, are likely to grow as the facts and outcomes emerge! Covid-19 pandemic measures may reap a terrible price.

Stay tuned!