By Alec Go
The Philippines ranks second among Southeast Asian nations in terms of number of COVID-19 vaccines administered, the government reported Monday.
Based on the health data presented by Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez Jr., the country has already administered 2,409,235 vaccines as of May 9 since its rollout on March 1, 2021.
According to latest data, 4,009,880 vaccines have been deployed in 3,410 vaccination sites from the inventory of 7,571,000 doses. At least 1,957,965 individuals have been injected with the first dose and 451,270 with the second dose.
This followed Indonesia with 21,993,299 total doses administered since its rollout on January 13.
Both countries are currently using Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines. The Philippines recently began the rollout of Sputnik V vaccines from Russia and is set to begin the use of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that it received on May 10.
Galvez reported that 11,364,000 doses may arrive this month from COVAX, Sinovac, and Gamaleya of Russia. A total of 20,514,000 doses are also eyed in June.
He added that they are also studying more measures to expedite the rollout of vaccines and to “eliminate challenges for possible outage.”
“The main purpose of this supply and demand vaccine rollout is to finish the vaccination at the earliest possible time, and maximize the resources we have without any wastage,” he said.
As of today, at least 3.7 million doses from the country’s inventory are donations from COVAX and China, while over four million are government-procured. -AG-rir
