The additional 400,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines against COVID-19 donated by China to the Philippines arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Wednesday morning.
A Philippine Airlines flight containing the vaccines arrived at 7:21 am.
The first batch of Sinovac vaccines, 600,000 doses, was delivered on February 28 and was the first official vaccine administered to health workers nationwide.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian, and Senator Bong Go, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health personally welcomed the Sinovac vaccines at the NAIA.
“This is another major milestone to us since the supply of vaccine is very limited and we have to inoculate 1.7 million medical frontliners and we have to meet our target this year in order to attain herd immunity,” Go said.
“Today we are happy to have the second batch,” Huang, for his part, said. “We hope we will contribute to speed up the mass vaccination in this country so that we will win over the war against the virus and recover the economy.”
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400K doses of Sinovac vaccines arrive in PH
The one million Sinovac doses brought by the government would arrive on March 29.
As of March 23, vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr. said 1,105,500 or 98 percent of the vaccines that the Philippines received via COVAX Facility and donations were already deployed.
Galvez said a total of 369,049 health workers have already been vaccinated.
For the second quarter, 5.5 million vaccine doses are expected to arrive in the Philippines in April. Of that number, 1.5 to two million doses will be coming from Sinovac, three million from Gamaleya (Sputnik V), and one million from COVAX.
By May, a total of 8,974,000 million COVID-19 vaccine doses is also expected to be delivered. The supplies would be from Sinovac, Gamaleya, AstraZeneca, COVAX, and Moderna, Galvez said.
He added 11.5 million COVID-19 vaccines from Sinovac, Gamaleya, Novavax, and AstraZeneca will arrive in June.
The government aims to vaccinate 500,000 to one million people per week from April to May.