Philippines gets over 1M doses of AstraZeneca vax through COVAX

More than one million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX Facility arrived in the Philippines on Saturday afternoon.

The  batch of 1,546,200 doses landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 at past 3 p.m.

National Task Force Against COVID-19 special adviser Dr. Teodoro Herbosa expressed gratitude to the United States government for the delivery of the vaccine doses.

“The Philippines is the third largest recipient of the COVAX vaccine that means we are efficient in vaccine administered. This increased our stock pile but the most important thing is to really give the vaccines to the Filipinos,” Herbosa said.

“We have to increase our vaccines administered, it is not the vaccines that save lives, it is the vaccination. We need to reach that 1.5 million doses per day that we are targeting and with this donation we will be able to do that in our countrymen,” he added.

Earlier in the day,  the country received a total of 1,065,600 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine donated by Japan.

Herbosa said the arrival of the fresh batch of COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed to the different regions of the country.

In a statement on Friday, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the Philippines expects to receive around 50 to 60 million COVID-19 vaccine doses in the remaining two months of the year.

The Philippines started its vaccination program against COVID-19 on March 1.

Galvez earlier said the government aims to increase daily vaccinations to 1.5 million. —LBG, GMA News