Vaccine czar Carlito Valdez reported on Sunday (June 20) that the country is now seeing an upward trend in vaccination throughout all priority groups.
“We’re now seeing an upward trajectory in the vaccination throughput across all priority groups. This is a very good indication that vaccine hesitancy is being addressed and more Filipinos, especially our senior citizens, are now willing to get inoculated,” Galvez said in a press release.
“We are happy that the public uptake for Sinovac has also increased significantly. The steady supply of doses, particularly of this brand, will enable us to fasttrack the inoculation of the A4 priority group, as well as provide much-needed vaccines to emerging hotspots across the country,” he added.
Galvez said the country recorded its highest daily vaccination rate so far of 322,929 jabs on June 15.
For two consecutive weeks this month, the country managed to maintain a weekly jab rate of more than one million per week, Galvez said.
From June 12 to 18, the country has administered 1,252,234 doses.
Meanwhile, the country now has 3,991 vaccination sites, and since the rollout of the vaccination program last March, the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) has administered 11,731,640 vaccine doses nationwide.
“We will sustain our momentum, as we expect a steady supply of vaccines in the coming weeks and months,” Galvez said.
Vaccine supply
As of June 19, the country has received a total of 14,205,870 doses purchased by the government and private sector, as well as those donated by foreign governments.
These vaccine brands include Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Sinovac.
In the first three weeks of June, the country received a total of 5,876,820 doses, consisting of 3.5 million Sinovac doses, 2,276,820 Pfizer doses (from the COVAX facility), and 100,000 Sputnik V doses.
Galvez said Sinovac has already confirmed the delivery of another 1.5 million doses on June 24, while some 250,000 Moderna doses, including those purchased by the private sector, are confirmed to arrive on June 27.
The COVAX facility will also be shipping 2,028,000 AstraZeneca doses in June, while 150,000 doses of component 2 Sputnik V vaccines are scheduled to be delivered this month.
“We also expect to receive the U.S. donation of vaccines before the end of June,” Galvez said.
Galvez added that the government expects to receive 11.67 million doses in July, consisting of 4.5 million Sinovac shots, and one million doses each of Moderna and Sputnik V vaccines.
The shipment of 1.17 million AstraZeneca doses purchased by the private sector are also set to arrive in July.
The COVAX facility is also scaling up its deliveries next month with four million doses of either AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech.
The initial release of U.S.-donated vaccines to COVAX of about 80 million doses will provide a major boost to the facility’s efforts to provide nations around the world with much-needed doses, Galvez said. – Report from Patrick de Jesus/PG – jlo
