Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez said on Thursday, August 11, that a congressional inquiry on expired COVID-19 vaccines will be conducted, and he expects that it will include the AstraZeneca vaccines ordered by Bacolod City.
“It’s not just Bacolod, there are several other LGUs as well as the national government that have expired vaccines involving billions of pesos”, Benitez said.
He said AstraZeneca has not sent the Bacolod City government the balance of its bill for the 650,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines ordered by the Leonardia administration, many of which expired at the Department of Health central office.
“I’m not in a hurry, I’m willing to forget if they are,” Benitez said.
About 434,000 AstraZeneca doses ordered for Bacolod by the Leonardia administration expired at the Department of Health Central Office in Manila and an AstraZeneca representative informed Benitez that the city government still owned a balance of P98 million, the mayor said earlier.
Dr. Carmela Gensoli, Bacolod City Health Officer, said many of 20,000 doses of the near expiring AstraZeneca vaccines sent to Bacolod expired at the end of July.
Negros Occidental that has a population of 2.6 million only ordered 100,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, he is wondering why Bacolod that has a much smaller population of about 600,000 ordered 650,000 doses, Benitez said.
Negros Occidental Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson earlier said the provincial government did not order too many vaccines because the national government had assured that it would provide for its needs.*