Malacañang on Monday said the Philippines is now the third country in Southeast Asia with the most number of people who got their first jab of novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine.
This after the government was able to breach the 1-million mark in terms of the number of people covered by its inoculation drive.
Citing collated data from Microsoft, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said 1.1 million people that were vaccinated in the country as of Sunday, which comes next to Indonesia (14.7 million) and Singapore (1.7 million).
“Despite our shortage in the supply [of Covid-19 vaccine], we are still the third in Asean [in terms of vaccination],” Roque said.
Last Tuesday, Chief Implementer of the government’s national policy on Covid-19 Carlito G. Galvez said 2 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines are expected to arrive this month. Of these, 1.5 million will come from Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech, while the remaining will be purchased from the Russian company, Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology.
Galvez said the government has already deployed over half of its 2.5 million doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines.
The government is targeting to vaccinate 50 million to 70 million people within the year.
Read full article on BusinessMirror