By Ferdinand Patinio / Philippine News Agency
Nearly 3.5 million doses of different COVID-19 vaccine brands have so far been donated by the French government to the Philippines through the COVAX Facility.
National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 special adviser Dr. Teodoro Herbosa welcomed the arrival of an additional 811,890 doses of Pfizer vaccine from France at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 in Pasay City on Saturday (Dec. 18) night.
“In behalf of the Filipino people, [and] our vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., we’d like to thank Ambassador Michèle Boccoz and the French people for the generous donation of 811,890 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech. This is part of the almost 3.5 million doses that the French government has given to the Filipino people since the beginning through the COVAX Facility,” he said in a media interview.
Herbosa said the additional donation would boost the country’s capacity to achieve its target of 54 million fully vaccinated Filipinos by the end of the year.
“So, we continue to reach our goal of 54 million by the end of the year and these vaccines will be a great help to actually reach that, because the Pfizer/BioNTech is the one we’re giving to our teenagers 12-17 years old, so this is a big contribution to the Philippines’ national vaccine deployment program,” he said.
Data from the National COVID-19 Vaccination dashboard on Saturday showed that 100,600,809 doses have been administered in the Philippines as of Dec. 17.
“So we also would like to announce that we’ve reached the 100 million doses injected to Filipino people. We have reached the 100 million mark, and we have over 60 million with the first dose and 43 million with actually two doses, 43 million Filipinos,” he said.
Boccoz said the French government will continue to support the vaccination program of the Philippines.
“We think that vaccination remains, really, a very important issue for the country. So this time, we have over 800,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine coming from France. It’s the first half of another batch that will come on Wednesday. There will be more coming from France on Wednesday and more AstraZeneca,” she said.
She said in total, there will be nearly six million doses of different vaccine brands donated by the French government through the COVAX Facility “to help and support in deploying the vaccination campaign” in the Philippines.
“It’s so important and the Philippines is doing so well with very good results, and we hope it continues and we’re ready to help and support the Philippines through the vaccination campaign,” Boccoz said. (PNA) – jlo
