Gov’t procures 15M Pfizer doses for children aged 11 and below

MANILA – A health official announced that the government has already procured additional 15 million doses of United States-made Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to boost the inoculation of children in the country by 2022.

Dr. Teodoro Herbosa, the special medical adviser of the National Task Force (NTF) against Covid-19, said these Pfizer doses are slated to be delivered in January and February next year.

“We’re doing very well. We’re preparing for the booster doses and the second doses for the arrival of Omicron and we continue to procure. We procured 15 million doses of Pfizer for children which will arrive in January and February,” Herbosa said, as he welcomed another delivery of 367,380 Pfizer doses at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Tuesday night.

Once these Pfizer deliveries have arrived in the Philippines, Herbosa said the government will start vaccinating children ages 5 to 11 years old.

The government eyes at least 13.5 million recipients of lower dosages of the Pfizer vaccine under this age bracket.

“In the meantime, we’re catching up and trying to hurry up with the vaccination to increase the [number] of fully vaccinated in the Philippines so that we can be ready for the arrival of the Omicron variant,” Herbosa added.

The government also welcomed the arrival of 1,981,500 doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday and 2,005,300 on Tuesday, procured by the private sector.

Private sector ‘unwavering’ support

In a statement, NTF chief implementer, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., cited the “unwavering” support of the private sector in the expansion of the national Covid-19 vaccination program leading to economic recovery.

“Through your efforts, we have been able to significantly expand our vaccine rollout, especially to our essential workers who are playing a key role in our nation’s economic recovery,” Galvez said.

The latest data from the National Covid-19 vaccination dashboard showed a total of 107,277,506 coronavirus doses have been administered nationwide, with 48,647,158 Filipinos were fully protected against the dreaded disease and 1,614,505 individuals have received added protection.

The Philippines has so far received 208,792,740 doses of Covid-19 vaccines, both procured and donations, since February this year.