Japan completed its donation of 1.96 million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to the Philippines on Saturday.
Manila on Saturday received 1,065,600 AstraZeneca shots, the second batch of Japan’s pledge of 1.96 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses.
The first batch of Japan-donated AstraZeneca doses arrived on Oct. 28.
Almost one million Pfizer-BioNTech doses arrived in Manila on Friday night.
The 973,440 doses were procured by the national government, the National Task Force Against Covid-19 said.
The majority of the Pfizer doses would be allocated to the vaccination of the pediatric sector, which is set for a nationwide rollout starting Nov. 3.
According to Wilben Mayor, assistant secretary and chief of staff of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, 50 to 60 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses were expected to arrive before the year ends.
As of Oct. 29, a total of 58,212,187 jabs have been administered nationwide, of which 31,408,510 have been administered as the first dose, while 26,803,677 have been given as the second dose. John Ezekiel J. Hirro