The Philippines’s leading airline, Cebu Pacific, delivered another 1 million Sinovac vaccine doses from Beijing via flight 5J 671, hitting its 10-million-mark on the number of doses flown from China to the Philippines since April.
“We are thankful for another shipment of vaccines to the country, and we appreciate the efforts of Cebu Pacific and other carriers in continuously supporting our country’s vaccine distribution,” said Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force Against Covid-19.
All transported vaccines were subject to the most stringent standards and kept in temperature-specific refrigerated containers to maintain product integrity.
“We are happy to keep contributing to the safe and timely delivery of vaccines to the country,” said Alex Reyes, Chief Strategy Officer at Cebu Pacific. “We remain committed to playing our role to fly Covid-19 vaccines in collaboration with the national and local government units.”
On July 8, Cebu Pacific achieved and exceeded the landmark number of 2.5 million doses transported domestically to 20 provinces. The airline expects to fly more shipments this month.
Aside from the vaccines from Sinovac, the Philippines is also expecting the arrival of the second tranche of 250,800 doses of United States-made Moderna on Thursday from the COVAX facility.
Out of the 250,800 doses of Moderna, the 194,400 doses is consigned to the Department of Health, while the 56,400 doses will go to International Cargo Terminal Service Inc.
With the additional supply, Galvez said that vaccine distribution in Metro Manila and other regions will be more equitable as they would be allotting more doses for the provinces, especially Region 6, Region 7, and Calabarzon.
PharmaServ will undertake the packaging of the vaccines before distributing it to various parts of the country.
Around 16 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines are also expected to arrive this month, including Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, Galvez said.
The Bureau of Customs at the NAIA immediately cleared and released the various shipment of Covid-19 vaccines after government representatives presented advance documents to the bureau.