The Ninoy Aquino International Airport Customs district cleared and released within an hour some 1.5 million doses of Sinovac vaccines that arrived from Beijing aboard a Cebu Pacific flight early Thursday morning.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, National Task Force Against Covid-19 chief implementer Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. and members of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. welcomed the 1.5 million doses of Sinovac at the premier airport.
The 1 million doses of the latest shipment was consigned to the Department of Health (DOH), while the rest of the 500,000 doses ordered by the Filipino-Chinese community is for the inoculations of their employees.
The 1.5 million doses were transported to PharmaServ Express cold storage in Marikina City. The DOH said the 1 million doses have been earmarked to cities and provinces experiencing a surge of the coronavirus.
Galvez said the arrival of more doses of Covid-19 vaccines will address the high-risk areas in Mindanao, even as he assured members of Congress that they will not neglect the southern regions.
Galvez added that 6 million more doses of Covid-19 vaccines will arrive before the end of this month.
He said 4.3 million doses have been delivered in the past two weeks.
“The bulk of our vaccine shipments started to arrive only in May. The vaccine deployment was based on the government’s risk assessment as well as our prioritization categories for the most vulnerable populations,” Galvez said.
Galvez said some 250,000 doses of Moderna vaccines will arrive in the country on June 25.
He said he is also expecting to receive around 2.5 million additional doses of Sinovac this month.
“Some 55,000 of the 250,000 doses of Moderna vaccines will arrive on June 25 will proceed to the private sector and another batch of AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX facility will arrive in the third or fourth week of June,” Galvez added.
The Philippines is expected to receive as much as 11.6 million doses of Covid-19 shots next month as wealthy nations vowed to donate surplus vaccine doses to developing and poor countries.
Galvez said rich countries have reached an “inflection point” wherein vaccine supplies are higher than the demand. He noted that the G7—a bloc composed of industrialized nations like the US, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan—have pledged to donate 1 billion doses of Covid-19 jabs to developing countries, including the Philippines.
Image courtesy of Manila International Airport Authority Media Affairs Division
Read full article on BusinessMirror