Philippines has administered 80M+ COVID jabs so far —NTF

The Philippines so far has administered over 80 million anti-coronavirus jabs since it began its national vaccination program on March 1, the National Task Force against COVID-19 said Sunday in a statement.

Citing November 26 data from National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC), the NTF said that 35,391,519 Filipinos have received two jabs -- or full vaccination -- of the  total 80,613,849 doses that have been administered.

Also, the NTF said that the 35,391,519 fully-vaccinated recipients represent 45.88% of the country's vaccine eligible population.

On November 26 alone, the country administered  1,010,869 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Earlier, NTF chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said that the vaccination rate could already help give a "sense of normalcy" among Filipinos.

“As we move closer to hitting our target of fully vaccinating 54 million Filipinos by the end of the year, I appeal to our local government units to continue ramping up their vaccination throughput,” Galvez added.

On vaccine deliveries, the NTF said a total 141,606,240 COVID-19 vaccine doses from various manufacturers have arrived in the Philippines.

Of the 141 million doses, 5,225,200 were Astrazeneca vaccine donated by the UK government through the COVAX facility and 1,219,140 doses where Pfizer-BioNTech procured by the national government.

The Philippines has also secured a total of 217.34 million vaccine doses, which is an increase from the 197.34 million doses guaranteed to be shipped to the Philippines.

Pfizer vaccines will be allocated on booster shots and primary series for minors but the Food and Drug Administration must first approve and recommend its use. —LBG, GMA News