By Christine Fabro
To achieve the national government’s goal to vaccinate at least 100 million residents here by the end of the year, the country needs about nine million doses of vaccine delivery every week, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said on Friday (Sept. 10).
Dominguez said during the Talk to the People that the government has set aside funds for the vaccine procurement and is only waiting for the vaccines to be delivered here.
“There is already money set aside for this. What we are waiting for is the delivery. Now, as I said, we need nine million [doses] a week. Unfortunately, for the first week of September, we only received about three and a half million. So we have to catch up for the coming weeks,” Dominguez said.
Amid the complaints about the slow vaccine rollout, Dominguez has assured the general public that vaccines are actually deployed and administered “as soon as they arrive.”
He added that pharmaceutical companies are currently facing some difficulties in making the deliveries as there are pending bulk orders from many countries worldwide, including the Philippines.
Vaccine deliveries and donations
“Much bigger volume” of COVID-19 vaccine doses is expected to arrive here this September from Sinovac, Pfizer, and US-COVAX donation, National Task Force (NTF) Chief Implemented Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr. said.
Moreso, the vaccine czar said that the production issues of AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Sputnik had been resolved.
For the months of September and October, the Philippines is expected to receive more than 61 million vaccine doses.
The country is also expecting an initial 5.5 million vaccine doses donated from the US-COVAX facility. In addition, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has also pledged 10 million doses for the country, however, only 5.5 million will be arriving this month.
“Also the US government, through [Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana], have indicated our request for the possible acceleration of the different US brand companies like Moderna and Pfizer,” Galvez said.
“The CEO [chief executive officer] of Moderna made the commitment that they will provide 5 million Moderna this coming September, and also Pfizer will also provide another 5 million,” Galvez added.
On Friday, another 1.5 million doses of government-procured Sinovac vaccines arrived in the Philippines. This brings to 31 million doses of the total number of China-made vaccines delivered to the country, of which 29,100,000 doses were procured by the national government. – rir
