THE country has so far received a total of 64,942,000 vaccine doses, of which 9,586,270 doses were delivered only within a week, or from September 13 to 19.
This marks the highest weekly delivery since February when the country started receiving vaccines from various manufacturers.
Around 6,171,590 million doses from these shipments arrived over the weekend. Just today, Monday evening, 561,600 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech arrived from the COVAX facility.
These developments shows the vaccination rollout commitment of the national government as it continues to scale up the country’s COVID-19 vaccine inventory with the steady arrival of larger shipments of government-procured and donated vaccine supplies.
“We are very happy with the developments in our vaccine acquisition efforts especially with the recent deliveries,“ said National Task Force Against COVID 19 Chief Implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr.
Of the more than 9.58 million doses delivered last week, 6.65 million are made up of Sinovac, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sputnik V vaccines combined, which were procured by the national government, 909,400 doses of AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines were purchased by the private sector and local government units (LGUs), and 2.02 million doses were donations from the COVAX facility.
“We are now beginning to reap the benefits of having a forward-looking and sustainable plan in our vaccine procurement. We will continue to negotiate and hopefully sustain this bulk allocation and delivery schedule in the coming weeks,” Galvez said.
The vaccine czar earlier announced that more than 34 million doses are expected to be delivered this month from various sources and manufacturers. Of this number, 13,041,410 doses have been delivered.
Galvez also shared that the vaccine manufacturers and the national government are currently negotiating to scale up the country’s monthly allocation beginning this month.
He noted that despite most of the supply contracts indicating that the volume of the Philippines’ orders will be shipped in the fourth quarter, the NTF has continued to engage with the vaccine manufacturers as part of its aggressive efforts to secure additional vaccine doses.
“We are grateful to our embassies and our consular offices around the globe for their hard work and determination to help our country access and secure the 30 million doses that we need monthly,” he said.
As of September 19, 41,414,015 jabs have been administered nationwide, of which 18,560,409 are fully vaccinated individuals or 24.06 percent of the country’s 77 million target population.
On the other hand, more than 22.85 million vaccine doses have been administered as the first shot.
In the National Capital Region, 84.47 percent of its target population have received at least one dose, while 66.37 percent have been fully inoculated.
Other areas throughout the country have started to scale up their vaccine rollout since the national government implemented its recalibrated vaccine deployment strategy, wherein the bulk of the allocations are deployed to provinces and regions with high number of cases.
The Cordillera Administrative Region has now fully vaccinated 26.64 percent of its target population. Region XI has completely inoculated 22.40 percent of its residents, while CALABARZON and Region VII have fully vaccinated 21.35 percent and 20.85 percent of their populations, respectively, according to data from the National Vaccination Operations Center.
“The latest vaccine deliveries will continue to be deployed to the regions and provinces across the country as part of our efforts to fully vaccinate the Filipino people,” said Galvez.