Additional 2.2 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX facility arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Thursday night.
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. and other officials of the Department of Health (DOH) welcomed the arrival of the vaccines at NAIA.
According to a joint statement by the DOH, World Health Organization, and the United Nations Children’s Fund, the vaccines will be given to individuals under the A1 to A3 priority group, which are the healthcare workers, the senior citizens, and those with comorbidities.
“If you are already in the priority group but have not yet registered with your local government unit, please contact your LGU to get vaccinated,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said.
“I urge everyone to choose to be vaccinated when it’s their turn to protect themselves and their loved ones,” he added.
A total of 210,000 doses will be sent to Metro Davao and Metro Cebu. The rest, local governments, will share in the NCR Plus Bubble.
2.2 million doses of Pfizer vaccine delivered to PH
But because Pfizer’s storage is delicate, only a select few will be provided.
“Ide-deploy natin dito sa NCR Plus and then sa mga areas na ready tumanggap ng Pfizer kasi hindi natin puwede natin ibigay sa lahat ng LGU ang Pfizer kasi nakikita natin marami tayong rotating brownout and then meron tayo tinatawag natin typhoon season ngayon at ayaw natin meron tayo mabulok o masira na vaccine,” said Galvez.
(We will deploy here in NCR Plus and then in areas that are ready to receive Pfizer because we can’t give Pfizer to all LGUs because we see a lot of rotating brownouts and then we have what we call typhoon season now and we don’t want to spoil the vaccine.)
On the other hand, Galvez assured that the pandemic task force has a plan for a rotational power interruption.
Meanwhile, an additional 1 million doses of Sinovac vaccines purchased by the government from China have arrived.
In total, the country has already received 7.5 million doses of such vaccines. In number, 1 million is from Chinese donations.
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