This city will be given an ample supply of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccines once the national government is able to procure them.

Mayor Edgardo Labella on Tuesday said he got this assurance from Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., the country’s vaccine czar and chief implementer of the national Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF).

In a press conference, he said the national government will allocate only a portion of the vaccines to each local government unit (LGU) due to limited budget.

Cebu City has allotted some PHP500 million for the purchase of the vaccines out of the unspent portion of its PHP3.2-billion Covid-19 funds.

Labella said based on his talk with Galvez, a tripartite memorandum of agreement could be signed between the city government, national government and the pharmaceutical company that will be chosen to supply the vaccines.

He said pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca are the two most likely candidate suppliers of the vaccine against Covid-19 in the Philippines. (PNA)