THE government would be limiting the latest vaccine donations which landed on Philippine soil to Metro Manila and three other areas, including the President’s hometown – Davao City.
In a televised announcement shortly before noon, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said that the 400,000 Sinovac vaccine doses that arrived last March 24, will be distributed in Metro Manila, its adjoining provinces, Cebu City and Davao City.
Citing the decision of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG), Roque said that such a move would reduce the continued spike in COVID-19 cases in these areas.
Government officials and health experts earlier cited the sharp surge in figures representing fresh COVID-19 cases to the presence of more transmissible variants of the virus from Wuhan, China.
He added that the 400,000 CoronaVac doses would still cover healthcare workers in these areas citing the need to inoculate the sector that directly deals with the highly-contagious disease.
The country still falls short in covering some 1.7 million healthcare workers even after receiving over 1.5 million donated jabs from the World Health Organization’s COVAX facility.