COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Dizon: Gov’t needs to vaccinate 250k - 300k people a day to meet target

The government needs to give a COVID-19 vaccine to 250,000 to 300,000 people per day to meet its target of vaccinating 50 million Filipinos within the year, National Task Force Against COVID-19 Deputy Chief Implementer Vince Dizon said Wednesday.

Dizon made the announcement with vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. currently in India in bid to secure 30 million doses of Novavax COVID-19 vaccine which is an American brand but is manufactured in Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of medicines.

“We have a  goal of inoculating 50 million Filipinos this year. We believe we can hit the target of 250,000-300,000 inoculations per day when the bulk of vaccines arrive,” Dizon said in an interview with ANC.

“[Vaccinating] 250,000 to 300,000 plus thousand per day is the target, but it is very difficult to measure the steady state of our inoculation of this point since the limited supply is still being distributed to hospitals across the country,” he added.

At least 1.12 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines Sinovac and AstraZeneca, donated by the Chinese government and the global effort COVAX facility, respectively, have been delivered to the Philippines so far.

Galvez earlier said that another one million doses of Sinovac, worth P700 million and paid for by the Philippine government, are expected to arrive on March 21.

The country’s vaccination program started last March 1, the last country in Southeast Asia to do so. The first in line are the health workers and medical frontliners, followed by the senior citizens, persons with comorbidities before the general population.

Before Galvez left for India, he said at least 44,000 of Filipinos have been inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine.

Galvez initially said that the Philippines can vaccinate 70 million people within the year in a best case scenario.

The Philippines has 41,822 active COVID-19 cases so far. — RSJ, GMA News