The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is expected to arrive in the Philippines in the next couple of months.
Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel “Babes” Romualdez disclosed the Philippines and Moderna have signed and sealed the agreement and are now only waiting for supply.
Romualdez said they are continuously working with the private sector to facilitate the delivery of the vaccines in the Philippines, with the expected target delivery of the first batch on the last week of May or first week of June.
20 million doses will be delivered in tranches, with half of it to be allocated for healthcare workers and the other half to the private sector.
Aside from Moderna, the vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson are also being taken care of by the government.
“It takes time but we’re not far behind… We are actually better than many countries because technically we are only March when we started our vaccination program and we’re confident that we’d be able to get the vaccine that we need before the end of this year and early next year,” Romualdez pointed out.
America is accelerating the production of vaccines in a bid to finish the rollout of their vaccination in the next months.
Meanwhile, Filipino-American healthcare workers in the US who have been vaccinated are urging other Filipinos in the country to take the shot as protection against the deadly virus. – Report from Ryan Lesigues
