President Rodrigo Duterte's directive to allow private sector to purchase coronavirus diseases vaccines should still be within the tripartite agreement, officials said on Tuesday.

"Let me clarify. The importation will be subject to a tripartite agreement," Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a televised press briefing.

Signatories to the tripartite deal are the national government, private sector, and the vaccine manufacturer.

"The government's signature is important given the indemnity provision of the law," he said, referring to Republic Act No. 11525 or the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act, which provides for government's indemnity to vaccine recipients who would experience severe adverse effects from the drug that they would receive.

In the same press briefing, National Task Force Against COVID-19 Chief Implementer and Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said Duterte just wants to "fast-track" the private sector purchase of the vaccines for his pronouncement on Monday night in his regular "Talk to the People."

"The directive of our President is to accelerate the process. That's the directive that there should be no delay, at least there's no perceived (notion) that we're controlling the procurement," he said.

On Monday night, Duterte announced that he would allow the private sector to purchase the COVID-19 vaccines for their employees, giving the impression that there would no longer be any intervention from the national government.

Galvez reiterated that all the COVID-19 vaccines right now are under emergency use authorization, meaning not for commercial use and not for profit.

"There's what we call as no profit, no loss, at the same time no commercialization. So we cannot sell these (vaccines) yet because of what we call as indemnity, the government is the one responsible for the indemnity and with that, they are really not for commercialization until the time of this pandemic," he explained.

Galvez said the process for the private sector procurement of COVID-19 vaccines was somewhat delayed because of the absence of the implementing rules and regulations of the Republic Act No. 11525. The government has completed the IRR for the new law.

"With the provisions of the law, we can now speed up (the procurement)," he said.

Roque also said the private sector are not required to donate half of their purchases to the government contrary to the tripartite agreements that previously were forged with AstraZeneca company.

But he added, "If they want to (donate), we still encourage that." Celerina Monte/DMS