By Ma. Teresa Montemayor/PNA
MANILA – A health official on Tuesday (May 11) said the government will administer as a first dose the more than two million doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines from the COVAX facility which the country received on May 8.
“The AstraZeneca vaccines have expiring dates of June and July — 1.5 [million doses] will be in June, and the rest will be in July. All vaccines now don’t have long expiry dates,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said during an online media forum.
Vergeire assured the public that the vaccine doses will not go to waste as the vaccine cluster has developed a mechanism to consume the jabs appropriately.
“We will be giving these vaccines as the first dose because the WHO (World Health Organization) has committed (that) they will be providing additional AstraZeneca vaccines by the end of May or the first week of June,” Vergeire said.
As for the rollout of 193,050 doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines which were delivered on Monday night, Vergeire said these will be distributed in the National Capital Region, Cebu City, Davao City, and Quirino because they have the capacity to store the jabs in ultra-low freezers.
About 128,700 doses are allocated for the NCR, 29,250 doses for Cebu City, 29,250 doses for Davao City, 1,170 doses for Quirino, and the remaining 4,680 doses will be kept as buffer doses. (PNA) -jlo
