PH to keep pace of up to 700K daily jabs with more vax

MANILA – The arrival of more coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) vaccines will help the country maintain its goal of administering up to 700,000 jabs daily for the third quarter of this year, an official of the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 said on Saturday.

“These vaccines will be of great help to our kababayans, especially now that we have rising Covid-19 cases due to the Delta variant. Based on what was mentioned and the goal set by the vaccine cluster, it’s 500,000 to 700,000 jabs daily by the third quarter. We thank the LGUs (local government units) because of the aggressive vaccination during ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) and MECQ (modified ECQ) situations. Through this, we will be able to deal with rising cases,” chief of the NTF sub-task group on current operations, Assistant Secretary Wilben Mayor, told reporters on the sidelines of the arrival of one million government-procured Sinovac vaccine doses and 260,800 Sinopharm vaccine doses donated by the Chinese government, at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2.

The Philippines has earlier set another record in its vaccination program after a total of 702,013 Covid-19 vaccine doses were administered on August 3, the highest daily throughput the country has recorded so far.

The arrival of the 260,800 doses completes the one million Sinopharm vaccine donation from Beijing, following the 739,200 doses that arrived in the country on Friday.

Mayor added that the vaccines would be distributed to areas with a high number of Covid-19 cases.

“Based on the directive of vaccine czar, Secretary Carlito Galvez, the basis of the vaccine cluster is science-based, of course, the rising case areas, the daily attack rate, and population density, and of course, the economic activities there in the particular area. Again, the disposition of its allocation depends on the rise of Covid cases,” he said.

Mayor also assured fair distribution of vaccines across the country.

“We leave it to the vaccine cluster to see to it that every region will get their vaccines,” he added.

Mayor said another shipment of Pfizer vaccine is expected to arrive in the country by the end of the month. He did not elaborate.

He added that they are awaiting the certificate of analysis of the newly arrived Sinovac jabs before these can be deployed to LGUs.

A certificate of analysis is an official document showing the results of scientific tests on a product, such as a food or a drug, which is required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The government has identified priority areas for vaccine deployment, especially in Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Pampanga, Batangas, Rizal, Bulacan, Metro Davao, and Metro Cebu – collectively known as the NCR Plus 8.

On Friday, the Philippines saw its highest single-day tally of Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, with 17,231 new infections.

The country currently has a total of 1,807,800 Covid-19 cases, with 1,653,351 recoveries, 123,251 active cases, and 31,198 deaths.