THE Philippines continues to expand its COVID-19 vaccine supply inventory and at the same time, more Filipinos are getting vaccinated at a faster pace in order to become protected from the dreaded COVID-19 disease.
As of August 12, more than 12 million, or 17.19 percent, of the country’s eligible target population, are now fully vaccinated.
Also, a total of 26,677,269 doses have already been administered nationwide, with more than 14 million of those doses were administered as the first shot.
“We got the commitment of our local government units (LGUs), especially those in areas under ECQ (enhanced community quarantine), that our vaccination efforts this August will be more aggressive because of the Delta variant,” said National Task Force against COVID-19 Chief Implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr., said.
“This milestone is the result of the collective efforts of our LGUs, our private sector partners, and our healthcare workers. They always find ways to ensure that they will deliver on their promises,” Galvez said.
The vaccine czar said nearly 240,000 jabs were administered in the National Capital Region (NCR) in a single day, where he declared that they are nearing the target number of jabs in the NCR at 250,000 jabs in a single day.
“We are confident that we will breach that figure very soon and sustain that momentum in the succeeding weeks, despite the multi-tasks our Mayors are performing simultaneously today,” said Galvez.
He said aside from vaccination, the LGUs are now distributing “ayuda,” enforcing the ECQ and pandemic response, and racing against time in containing the surge of cases. Demand for doctors, nurses and other health workers are also exponentially increasing to man field hospitals, quarantine facilities, testing labs, and vaccination sites.
The country recorded its highest number of administered jabs in one day last August 5 with 710,482.
While many of the Philippines’ business districts including the NCR are under ECQ, the country’s daily average jab rate stands at 519,828.
From August 6 to 12, the country was able to administer a total of 3,478,082 vaccine doses.
Galvez said that with the latest shipment of 575,800 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that arrived Friday, the country has so far received over 42 million doses since February.
Galvez, Presidential Adviser on Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion, and Lotis Ramin – AstraZeneca Philippines country chief welcomed the arrival of the vaccine procured by the private sector at the NAIA terminal 1.
“The arrival of the second batch this August of AstraZeneca vaccines totalling to 1.15M doses procured by the private sector is very timely, as we are aggressively rolling out vaccination efforts to help prevent the transmission of the Delta variant,” Concepcion said.
Concepcion also highlighted that these doses of AstraZeneca vaccines will complement the government’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the Delta variant. “Ramped up vaccination during the ECQ will help us beat the Delta variant, thereby allowing us to save the fourth quarter of the year from irreversible effects to the healthcare system and to the economy,” he stressed.
More than eight million doses have been delivered this month consisting of Astrazeneca vaccines donated by the UK government and procured by private sector, COVAX-donated Moderna vaccines, the UAE-donated Hayat-Vax vaccines, private sector-procured Moderna vaccines, and government-procured Sinovac, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna vaccines.
The vaccine czar pointed out that with the confirmed deliveries of 12 million doses for the first half of the month, the government will be able to meet the vaccine requirement of NCR for August, and at the same time, allocate more shots to other regions and provinces nationwide.
On Thursday night, at least two million Sinovac vaccines arrived in the county. The newest batch of Sinovac vaccines will be divided among all the regions, in which one million doses will be distributed to the NCR and other high risk areas due to the Delta variant, while the other one million doses will be equally distributed among the provinces.
He said another seven million doses of Sinovac vaccines are expected to be delivered within the month, together with the one million doses of the Chinese-donated Sinopharm vaccines.
Galvez said the same deployment plan will be followed for these shipments, wherein half of the vaccine doses will be allocated for areas with high COVID-19 cases, while the other half will be distributed among low-risk cities and provinces.
He assured the governors of provinces classified as low risk that their areas will receive their allocation.
This move, Galvez said, is despite the ongoing implementation of the government’s “focus and expand” deployment strategy wherein the bulk of the vaccines will be dispatched to areas with a high number of cases and those with confirmed local transmissions of the Delta variant.