The initial doses of vaccines that arrived in the country have been immediately distributed to hospitals nationwide, the National Task Force Against COVID-19 assured on Wednesday.
According to Secretary Vince Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the task force, over half or around 60 percent of the more than one million doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines have been deployed for medical frontline workers.
The inoculation of 1.8 million medical workers is being fast-tracked so that the rollout of vaccines for the general population could begin once the additional supplies are delivered.
“Ang objective ay midyear tapos na ang healthcare workers pati na rin ang mga senior citizens (The objective is to complete the vaccination of healthcare workers and senior citizens by midyear),” Dizon disclosed.
The additional 400,000 doses of CoronaVac donated by the Chinese government are expected to arrive this month, together with the one million doses procured by the government.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also made a commitment on the delivery of over 100,000 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in April. And positive outcome is expected from the negotiation with India’s Novavax.
The official is confident the government is still on track in meeting its target of vaccinating 50 to 70 million individuals this year while ensuring the compliance with the priority list.
“Tingin ko po okay po tayo. Ang pinaka importante lang naman ay dumating ang significant amount of supply (I think we are okay. The most important is the arrival of significant amount of supply)… “‘Yun ang tinatrabaho ni Sec. Galvez at ang ating team na nasa India ngayon na masigurado na dumating ‘yung suplay para abutin ang target natin na 50M by the end of 2021 (That is what Sec. Galvez and our team are doing now in India to ensure the delivery of supply and meet the 50M target by end of 2021),” he stated..
Meanwhile, the testing czar said the country still has sufficient quarantine facilities amid the spike of COVID-19 cases and the threat of new COVID-19 variants. – Report from Ryan Lesigues
