MANILA — Malacañang on Wednesday welcomed the labor department's offer to let thousands of health care workers, mostly nurses, take jobs in the United Kingdom and Germany if the two countries agreed to donate COVID-19 vaccines.

Alice Visperas, director of the labor department's international affairs bureau, said the Philippines was open to lifting the cap on health workers' overseas deployment in exchange for vaccines from Britain and Germany, which it would use to inoculate outbound workers and hundreds of thousands of Filipino repatriates.

• Labor department offers Filipino nurses in exchange for vaccines from Britain, Germany

The Philippines has ordered enough coronavirus shots for its adult population, Palace spokesman Harry Roque said, when asked to react to this statement.

Still, he was open to the idea.

"Pero siyempre kung mas maraming supply pa ang makukuha natin, bakit hindi?," he told reporters in an online briefing.

(But of course, if we can get more supplies, why not?)

The idea for the offer did not come from President Rodrigo Duterte, but rather, from Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr, said Roque.

"Wini-welcome din natin [ito] because more is better than less," he said.

(We welcome this because more is better than less.)

The Philippines earlier relaxed a ban on deploying its health care workers overseas, but still limits the number of medical professionals leaving the country to 5,000 a year.

Video courtesy of PTV

The proposal to provide more Filipino nurses to Europe in exchange for COVID-19 vaccines is "insensitive and dehumanizing," said former vice president Jejomar Binay.

"Our nurses are not commodities to be traded," Binay, also former presidential adviser on OFW affairs, said in a statement.

Nurses are among the millions of Filipinos who work overseas, providing in excess of $30 billion a year in remittances vital to the country's economy.

Britain said there were 11,000 more nurses working in the National Health Service than last year. It said that while it was grateful to the 30,000 Filipinos working for the NHS, Britain did not need to trade vaccines for more.

"We have no plans for the UK to agree to a vaccine deal with the Philippines linked to further recruitment of nurses," a health ministry spokeswoman said, citing Prime Minister Boris Johnson's pledge to share spare shots later in the year.

"We have confirmed that we will share any surplus vaccines in the future - for example through the COVAX international procurement pool."

The Philippines wants to secure 148 million doses of vaccines altogether, while Britain has ordered more than 400 million doses, six times its population.

While Britain and Germany have inoculated a combined 23 million people, the Philippines has yet to start its campaign to immunize 70 million adults, or two-thirds of its 108 million people. It expects its first vaccines this week, donated by China.

Calls to Germany's mission in Manila went unanswered.

Britain has the world's fifth highest coronavirus death toll, while Germany has the 10th most infections globally.

In 2019, almost 17,000 Filipino nurses signed overseas work contracts, government data showed.

While Filipino nurses have fought to lift the deployment ban to escape poor working conditions and low pay at home, the workers-for-vaccine plan has not gone down well with some medical workers.

"We are disgusted on how nurses and health care workers are being treated by the government as commodities or export products," said Jocelyn Andamo, secretary general of the Filipino Nurses United.

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— Reports from Jamaine Punzalan, ABS-CBN News, and Reuters