11M doses of Covid-19 vaccine to arrive this month

MANILA – The Philippines will receive a total of 11,058,000 doses of Covid-19 from various pharmaceutical companies in June, National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Wednesday.

Galvez, also the country vaccine czar, said the biggest single-day shipment will arrive on Thursday.

Government officials are set to welcome the arrival of 1 million doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac jab via Cebu Pacific flight 5J671 at around 7:30 a.m. at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2 in Pasay City.

Another 2.2 million doses of Pfizer vaccine, on the other hand, will be delivered via DHL flight that is expected to land at around 9 p.m. also at NAIA Terminal 2.

These vaccines will be stored at the cold chain facility owned by Pharmaserv Express, Inc. in Marikina City, Galvez said.

Some 210,600 doses of Pfizer jabs will be allocated each for Metro Cebu and Metro Davao and the rest of the supply will be given to the Covid-19 high-risk areas of the National Capital Region (NCR).

The Gamaleya Research Institute will also deliver around 100,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine on June 11.

Galvez said the government expects to get additional 12 million doses of vaccines in July, 17 million jabs in August, and 15 to 20 million vaccines in September.

He said the stable deliveries of vaccines starting July will boost the country’s vaccination drive as the government hopes to increase the daily vaccination rate up to 500,000 doses.

The government is eyeing to open more vaccination sites of up to 5,000 with the arrival of the bulk of jabs, he added.

The country has so far received some 9.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines and administered over 6 million doses since the vaccination rollout started on March 1.