DOH: 3.2M doses of J&J COVID-19 vaccine set to arrive on July 19

At least 3.2 million doses of Johnson and Johnson (J&J) vaccine against COVID-19 will be delivered to the country on July 19, the Department of Health (DOH) said Monday.

Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said these 3.2 million J&J vaccine doses are a donation from the United States government through the global aid COVAX facility and will be used on senior citizens and persons with comorbidities.

“The directive from [vaccine czar] Secretary [Carlito] Galvez is to use the J&J largely on senior citizens since that will be very convenient for senior citizens and those residing in far flung areas,” Cabotaje said during the Laging Handa forum.

Unlike other brands, J&J vaccine is a single-dose vaccine.

If this pushes through, this will be the first J&J shipment to reach Philippine shores.

As for the over three million doses of two-dose AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine which arrived last week, Cabotaje said that the one million doses donated by Japan will be allocated in NCR Plus 8, 1.5 million doses for second dose, and the remaining 500,000 doses will be deployed nationwide.

Likewise, Cabotaje said that Galvez has ordered the direct deployment of COVID-19 vaccines to Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi provinces, which have porous borders and amid rising number of the more transmissible Delta variant cases in nearby Malaysia and Indonesia.

Cabotaje said that the Philippines has already vaccinated 13 million individuals, of which 3.52 million are already fully vaccinated.

The Philippines aims to fully vaccinate 58 million individuals in highly urbanized areas to achieve population protection by the end of the year. —KBK, GMA News