Close to half a million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) yesterday afternoon aboard an Emirates Air flight EK 332 from Dubai.
The 415,040 doses were transported to government-approved cold storage in Marikina City after the shipment was cleared by airport authorities.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the vaccines are his country’s commitment to helping the Philippines fight the pandemic.
“The 415,000 doses are part of the first batch of the 100 million doses we’ve pledged to get the poorest parts of the world vaccinated as matter of urgency,” Raab added.
President Rodrigo Duterte welcomed the first shipment of 487,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines that arrived at Villamor Air Base last March 4, 2021 onboard a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines from Amsterdam.
The second batch composed of 2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX facility arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 on May 8, 2021 on board Singapore Airlines flight SQ910 from Amsterdam.
The 2 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines are donations from different international organization funders of COVAX like the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNDP, and others.
On July 8, President Rodrigo Duterte with officials from the Japanese Embassy also welcome some 1,124,100 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines donated by the Japanese government and arrived July 8, 2021 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on board 1All Nippon Airways from Tokyo.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that the Delta variant is a warning to the world to suppress the virus quickly before it mutates again into something even worse.