PH to focus on ‘vax to the max’ strategy

MANILA – The national government will be ramping up vaccination strategies by involving the private sector in achieving population protection as soon as possible.

The “vax to the max” strategy will be the main focus of the government along with the private sector, National Task Force (NTF) against Covid-19 chief Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said in a news release on Saturday.

Galvez cited the private sector’s “enormous” contributions to the country’s fight against Covid-19 as they are also donating vaccines to the local government units.

“It (donations) added an additional volume for our vaccination program. The private sector is also trying to mobilize their resources to help the national government to further expand the vaccination drive,” he said.

Galvez said the government will expand the vaccination program to those Filipinos willing to get Covid-19 shots and will concentrate further on the inoculation of minors aged 12 to 1.

“The National Task Force joined hands with the LGUs and the private sector to achieve that objective of jabbing at least 1 million to 1.5 million jabs a day,” he said.

The average daily jabs administered in the last seven days stood at 454,764 doses.

The NTF, along with the Department of Health, is planning to open at least 2,500 vaccination sites nationwide to achieve the targeted average daily jabs.

About 2,201 sites are operating as of this moment.

To date, the country has administered a total of 55,168,455 doses nationwide with 29,726,917 given as first doses and 25,441,538 as second doses.

The fully vaccinated individuals represent 32.54 percent of the country’s 110,198,654 total population.

The Philippines has so far received 94,678,340 doses as of Friday, with 75,84,55 deployed nationwide.

Of the total deliveries, 58,723,760 doses were procured by the national government, 24,330,280 doses were acquired through the COVAX Facility, 7,983,160 doses were purchased by the private sector and 3,641,140 were bilateral donations.