Galvez: Philippines getting up to 10M Pfizer COVID-19 vax doses

The Philippines will get up to 10 million doses of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine donated by the United States, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said.

In a report to President Rodrigo Duterte aired on Thursday, Galvez said the US initially allocated six million doses, but this was later increased to 10 million.

Likewise, Galvez said that Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. recently traveled to the US to thank Washington for its assistance to the Philippine vaccination program.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the delivery to the Philippines of an additional 10 million doses from the COVAX facility within the next few weeks.

“We expect much larger consignments to come within this third and fourth quarter to the Philippines and to many other countries who are recipients of COVAX vaccines,” WHO country representative Rabindra Abeyasinghe said.

So far, the Philippines has received 57.547 million vaccine doses since February, and of the total, 28, 13.485 million came from COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing program backed by the WHO. —LBG, GMA News