MANILA – Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) against Covid-19, is optimistic that the country will be able to boost its immunization rate in the next months as additional life-saving vaccines begin to arrive this month.
Galvez announced on Monday that the Philippines reached 13 million vaccinations on July 10, despite minor delays in vaccine supply.
“We expect to increase our throughput or the administration of the jabs in the succeeding weeks and months, with the expected arrival of more than 11 million of vaccines this July,” Galvez said during the Talk to People of President Rodrigo Duterte.
More than 4 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines will be supplied next week, he said, including 2.5 million doses of Sinovac, 1.17 million doses of AstraZeneca, and 3,239,400 doses from the COVAX facility and the United States of America’s “donation sharing” scheme.
He said that the Philippines would get a total of 16,570,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines in August, including 8.4 million doses of Sinovac, 1.17 million doses from AstraZeneca, 2 million doses of Pfizer, 1 million doses of Moderna, and 4 million doses from the COVAX facility.
So far, the Philippines has a total stockpile of 20,779,910 doses, of which 9,180,310 are donated vaccines.
Meanwhile, Galvez stated that officials from the NTF and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) are planning to visit locations in Visayas and Mindanao where Covid-19 cases are on the rise.
These areas include the provinces of Samar and Palawan, as well as the cities of Cagayan de Oro, General Santos, and Zamboanga.
“We will start visiting them next week. We will also discuss the updates on the variants of concerns on the region and the ongoing preparation to address this variant and also our way forward in our pandemic response and massive vaccination,” he said.
Galvez mentioned that they might go to Region 3 (Central Luzon) over the weekend.
