A shipment of 703,170 Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine doses arrived in the Philippines on Wednesday night.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. said the jabs would be delivered to areas with high Covid-19 cases and provinces that had yet to receive Pfizer doses.
According to the National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19, 51,480 jabs were delivered to Cebu City on Wednesday night, while 51,480 doses were shipped to Davao City on Thursday morning.
The remaining 600,210 doses were brought to a cold-chain facility in Marikina City for temporary storage, the NTF added.
“Majority of the allocation will be given to provinces and those affected regions, especially Region 4-A, Region 3, Region 1, Region 2, Region 7, Region 11, Region 6, Region 8, Region 9— areas that are heavily affected by Covid-19,” Galvez said.
Galvez said the government would start delivering Pfizer doses to areas that had yet to receive them, so as to prepare them for bigger shipments in the future.
The country has received 2,823,700 doses of the 40 million jabs it purchased from the American manufacturer.
In total, the Philippines has received 52,603,760 Covid-19 vaccine doses. John Ezekiel J. Hirro