Flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) said it remains the only air carrier that can airlift the Covid-19 vaccine in large quantities from sources in Europe or the United States.
“We are the only airline that can take the vaccine from the continental sources in Europe and the US and take them in large enough quantities that satisfy the maximum safety limits on the carriage of dry ice (CO2),” said PAL President and COO Gilbert Santa Maria in a television interview.
He added that PAL can carry these same vaccines from their continental location “to whatever airport in the Philippines that is most suitable.”
Santa Maria said PAL can fly from Spain to Cebu to carry Moderna vaccines direct to Visayas and Mindanao.
“We can fly from Spain direct to Davao to bring the Moderna vaccines there. If it’s AstraZeneca sourced out of Belgium, we can do the same. That’s our capability. We are the only airline in the Philippines with the ultra long-haul, wide-body aircraft.”
Santa Maria added, “PAL can take whatever is shipped directly to Manila by the vaccine manufacturer. It will be broken down in bulk by the shipper, put in cold storage and then sent around the country in a timely manner.”
“We have multiple options for aircraft. We can take the medium wide-body, the A330s. We can take our narrow body A320/A321s. We can also take our turboprop.”
He said PAL is the only company that has the Dash8 turboprop plane, which can fly as fast as jets and take the cargo from Manila to a secondary airport “or to an island destination that has an airport or fly to an airport and from there, fly out using smaller aircraft.”
Team PAL
“Handa na po namin gawin ‘yan. Pinagpaplanuhan na namin ‘yan. [We are ready, we have planned for it],” he added, saying the PAL team has been part of the cold chain logistics team organized by vaccine czar, Secretary Carlito Galvez, for the distribution of vaccines.
The Philippines will receive its first shipment of Covid-19 vaccine in mid-February, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said during a press conference at a cold-chain facility in Pasay City on Friday.
Galvez told a Senate hearing in January that “the first shipment of Covid-19 vaccine is expected to arrive on February 20 “and mass inoculation could start within days.”
He told the Senate Committee of the Whole, which held an inquiry on the government’s Covid immunization program, that vaccination could start by the third week of February or first week of March.
Galvez estimated that at least 2 million Filipinos would have received Covid-19 shots by April.
Approved vaccines
The Council on Foreign relations said several vaccines have been approved for general or emergency use in countries including China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Close to a dozen vaccines—including ones by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, and Sinopharm—are already being distributed to tens of millions of people.
Vaccines go through rigorous testing for safety and effectiveness before they are approved for public use, a process that typically takes years
As of February 2021, over 100 million doses had been administered worldwide. Several countries, such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates, are making swift progress immunizing their citizens, while the vast majority have either vaccinated only small fractions of their populations or are yet to start.
Meanwhile, Customs Commissioner Rey Leonardo instructed airport customs district collector Mimel Talusan to ensure enough personnel to facilitate the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines and at the same time balance the need to protect the country’s borders against unregistered imports.
Talusan said airport customs continues the profiling of importers of medicines, suppliers and shippers for physical examination and X-ray to ensure no fake vaccines or medicine pass thru the premier airport.
She said all government in-coming vaccines will have an advance admission of documents with free arrival assessment after dealing with representatives from the Department of Health with the approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
“We will not entertain private importations of vaccine for Covid-19 to ensure no fake vaccine will be release in any customs warehouses,” she told BusinessMirror.
Talusan instructed the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Services, customs police and Customs Anti-Drug Task Force to beef up monitoring efforts to prevent the bogus vaccines from entering the customs warehouses.
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