The Philippines received over two million doses of the US-made Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on Sunday night.
The latest delivery contained 2,098,980 doses. According to the National Task Force Against Covid-19, the doses were donated by the US government through the Covax facility.
Washington has donated over 20 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to the Philippines to date.
“I can only encourage people in the Philippines to get vaccinated, it’s a safe, very effective vaccines and that’s the way our economy and our schools get back to normal,” US Embassy in the Philippines Chargé d’Affaires Heather Variava said during the arrival of the vaccines.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the country could increase its daily jab rate to over one million doses once pediatric vaccination expands nationwide on Nov. 3.
“We are very confident that we can have 1 million or 1.5 million jabs a day. Before, we thought having 300 to 500 [thousand] jabs a day is impossible but right now, we’re able to achieve more or less 700,000 jabs a day,” Galvez said.
The Philippines received 34,887,870 vaccine doses in October.
To date, it has received a total of 106,212,460 Covid-19 vaccine doses from various manufacturers since February. John Ezekiel J. Hirro