By Pearl Gumapos
One million doses of Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine arrived past 7:00 a.m. today, Thursday (June 10), while almost 2.28 million doses of Pfizer are arriving tonight.
The CoronaVac vaccines were carried on a Cebu Pacific airplane that landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2.
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. was there to welcome the arrival of the COVID-19 vaccines along with testing czar Secretary Vince Dizon.
The World Health Organization (WHO) approved last week the emergency use of the two-dose vaccine CoronaVac. WHO’s addition of CoronaVac to its emergency use list assures the public that the vaccine has met international standards.
The arrival of these vaccines is one of two shipments arriving today.
The second shipment, which will be coming from the global vaccine-sharing COVAX facility, will be arriving at NAIA at 9:00 p.m. at Terminal 3.
This shipment comprises a total of 2,279,160 doses of Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccines. Cebu and Davao will be receiving 210,600 doses each, while the rest will be reserved for the National Capital Region (NCR).
This shipment of Pfizer is the biggest to arrive in the country after May 10, when the country received over 193,000 doses of the vaccine.
“Ito ay, ayon sa NTF, ang pinakamalaking single-day delivery, sa ngayon, ng bakuna,” Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said in a public briefing.
Roque says Galvez assured the steady supply of vaccines, and that vaccine deployment will prioritize areas most vulnerable to COVID-19 surges. – jlo
