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MANILA (TO UPDATE) Two US biotech firms are ready to supply the Philippines with up to 25 million doses of their candidate COVID-19 vaccines, a Philippine envoy said early Friday.
Moderna and Arcturus are willing to provide the country with 4 to 25 million doses of the vaccine by the third quarter of 2021 if the government finds their proposals acceptable, said the Philippine Ambassador to the United States, José Manuel “Babe” Romualdez.
“We hope that our government will consider the promising candidates of Moderna and Arcturus for inclusion in our country’s anti-COVID vaccine group,” he said in a statement posted on the official Twitter page of the Philippine Embassy in the United States.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine appeared to be ready to receive an Emergency Use Authorization (US) after US Food and Drug Administration personnel.
Moderna’s vaccine could become the second to be considered by the US FDA Last week, the agency licensed the vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s experimental vaccine is based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, which is based on synthetic genes that can be generated and manufactured in weeks, and produced at scale more quickly than conventional vaccines. Pfizer’s vaccine also uses mRNA technology.
Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings Inc., a California-based company, also employs the same technology in developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
In the first quarter of 2021, the Philippines intends to use 4 candidate vaccines from Russia and China, Malacañang said.
These are the Gamaleya Institute of Russia and Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino of China, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said at a news conference on Thursday.
By the second quarter, the country expects to source its vaccine supply from British drugmaker AstraZeneca, of which 2.6 million doses were insured by the private sector.
COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Covax, Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and Moderna will arrive in the Philippines during the third quarter.
In early December, the Philippine government allowed the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines and drugs, 8 months after the crisis that has disrupted lives and disrupted economic activities.
The new coronavirus, which causes respiratory disease, has infected more than 454,000 people in the Philippines, of which 8,850 deaths were related to the virus.
The national count includes more than 419,000 people who have recovered from COVID-19, while more than 25,000 patients are still sick with the virus.
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– With a Reuters report
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