By Filane Mikee Cervantes / Philippine News Agency
More than 24 million individuals have so far been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in the Philippines, the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 said Tuesday (Oct. 19).
During President Rodrigo Duterte’s Talk to the People public briefing, NTF chief implementer Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. said 24,498,753 Filipinos were fully vaccinated, or around 31.76% of the country’s eligible population.
Galvez said the Philippines has administered 52.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine nationwide, 28.2 million of which were given as first doses.
The government, he said, is targeting to scale up its vaccination rollout to 1.5 million jabs a day to inoculate at least 50% of the country’s target population by year end, with supply no longer being an issue.
“Right now, supply is not anymore an issue. We have more than 38 million doses in our warehouses,” Galvez said.
He said the issue now is related to logistics, wherein it takes seven to nine days to deliver COVID-19 shots from warehouses to vaccine centers. (PNA) – jlo
