(Eagle News) – More than 100 million COVID-19 vaccines have already been delivered to the Philippines as of Thursday, Oct. 28, as officials announced the country had breached its target a few days earlier than the set end-of-the-month deadline.
The country received a total of 100,528,240 COVID-19 vaccine doses after the delivery on Thursday of 976,950 government-procured Pfizer-BioNTech jabs.
“Today, we celebrate another milestone in our national vaccination program. Initially, there were those who doubted that this feat could be achieved given the many challenges we had to face and overcome,” said National Task Force against COVID 19 Chief Implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr. in a press conference following the arrival of the vaccines.
Of the 100.52 million doses delivered to the Philippines, 62.67 million doses were government procured, 7.98 million doses were procured by the private sector and LGUs, 24.33 million doses were sourced through the COVAX facility, and 5.53 million doses were direct donations of partner nations, according to the NTF in a release.
The majority of the vaccines, at 44.5 million doses were Sinovac jabs, followed by Pfizer BioNTech vaccines at 27.31 million doses, and 12.69 million doses from AstraZeneca.
The rest were 9.98 million doses of Moderna, 3.24 million doses of Johnson & Johnson, 1.69 million doses of Sputnik V, and 1.1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines.
-PHL, int’l collective effort recognized-
Galvez said that this achievement of breaching the 100 million doses target earlier than the October 31 deadline was the achievement for the whole Philippines and the international community that helped deliver the vaccines to the country.
“This achievement is not only a product of a nation’s people working together, but is also a testament of the strong cooperation among international and multilateral partners and stakeholders to save lives and humanity,” he said.
Galvez thanked member-agencies of the task force, as well as the private sector, local government units (LGUs) and international partner organizations for their support and commitment to help the country secure and scale up its vaccine supply.
“We are grateful particularly to the private sector and LGUs who have willingly shared their resources so that our country could continue to scale up its vaccine supply,” the vaccine czar said.
He also thanked Presidential adviser for entrepreneurship and Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion and Mr Enrique Razon of the International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI) for initiating the multiparty agreements for AstraZeneca and Moderna, respectively.
Galvez underscored the significant contribution of the tripartite agreement forged between manufacturers, the private sector, LGUs, and the national government to secure the 24.9 million vaccine doses that have significantly expanded the country’s supply inventory.
“The pooling of resources was an effective strategy to ensure our vaccine allocations from various manufacturers, and assure their timely delivery to the country,” he said.
The government targets to vaccinate around 50 to 70 million by the end of the year, and inoculate 80 to 90 million before the May 2022 elections, according to the NTF against Covid-19.
(Eagle News Service)
