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| Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin. (Photo from DFA) |
[Asia News Communication = Reporter Reakkana] MANILA — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said yesterday that the Philippines wasn’t bartering Filipino health care workers for COVID-19 vaccines with the United Kingdom or Germany, PhilStar said. “No one is asking for a trade. Just a way of saying our relationship is beneficial coming and going,” Locsin tweeted.
“Our new nurses’ future experience in pandemic UK will be the core of our future response to the next pandemic. We were spared SARS so COVID took us by surprise,” he added. Earlier, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) was reported to have proposed to deploy more nurses to the UK and Germany with the hope of securing some 600,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines for the Philippines. Last Wednesday, British Ambassador Daniel Pruce said the UK had no plans to link the Philippines’ procurement of vaccines to the deployment of Filipino nurses and other health care workers to the UK.
Pruce added that Britain’s health ministry was committed to the domestic use of vaccines and that any excess would be directed through the COVAX or COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access facility of the World Health Organization (WHO). COVAX is a global initiative aimed at providing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, WHO, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.
