Second batch of Sinovac vaccines donated by China arrives in the Philippines

An additional 400,000  doses of Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 that were donated by China arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Wednesday morning.

The vaccine doses arrived at 7:21 a.m.  via a Philippine Airlines flight.

It was the second batch of Sinovac vaccines donated by the Chinese government that arrived in the country. The first one, consisting of 600,000 doses, arrived on February 28 and was used on the official rollout of the government's vaccination program the following day. 

Among those who welcomed the vaccines at the NAIA were 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.

"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." 

Galvez had earlier said the total vaccine deployed in the country for the first quarter of 2021 was at 1,105,500 or 98%. He also said a total of 369,049 health workers have already been inoculated.

Aside from the 400,000 doses of Sinovac’s vaccine that arrived on March 24, 979,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses may also arrive between March 24 to 26, he said. 

The Philippines is expecting 1 million more Sinovac vaccine doses it procured for P700 million. The vaccine, named CoronaVac, is administered in two doses.

Aside from Sinovac, other COVID-19 vaccines issued emergency use authorization by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration were Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V.  --KBK, GMA News