PH hits single-day 1M Covid-19 jabs administered

MANILA – The government has reached its target of administering at least one million coronavirus jabs per day as the daily vaccination rate gradually increased after the weekend and All Saints’ Day.

The country reached that goal on Thursday with 1,119,389 jabs, a gradual increase from 932,762 doses on Tuesday to 948,521 on Wednesday.

Data from the National Covid-19 Vaccination dashboard showed the Philippines has already administered 62,474,334 doses nationwide.

In the National Capital Region (NCR), about 88.86 percent of the eligible population are now fully vaccinated.

There are 28,718,856 Filipinos who have completed their protection against the dreaded disease, representing 37.23 percent of the 110 million estimated total population.

The average daily jabs administered in the past seven days stood at 608,878 doses.

In an interview on Friday, National Task Force Against Covid-19 chief and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. cited the need to further accelerate the vaccination program, particularly in low-risk areas with high vaccine hesitancy.

Citing a local survey, Galvez said 20 to 30 percent of the population are hesitant to get Covid-19 shots.

“If we will translate that, it will be more or less 20 to 30 million. As the Israeli experts said, if you have more than 20 million people going around without being vaccinated, we cannot exit from this pandemic,” he added.

So far, Galvez said the country has sufficient vaccine supply, with more vaccines arriving in the next few weeks.

“With the plenty of supply that we are heading right now, we see that someday we will incentivize those who are vaccinated. Meaning we will give the vaccinated with more incentives to roam around while the unvaccinated will be restricted,” he said.

The Philippines has received 108,912,560 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, with additional 866,970 Pfizer-BioNTech doses arriving Friday night and another 866,970 on Saturday.