By Joyce Ann L. Rocamora/Philippine News Agency
The country’s current supply of coronavirus vaccines is more than enough to cover the targeted number of vaccines and initial recipients of booster shots before the year ends.
National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 medical adviser Dr. Teodoro Herbosa made the assurance on Friday as he welcomed the arrival of 609,570 doses of government-procured Pfizer-BioNTech at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3.
“The total health care workers here is only about 1.9 million and we have a lot in our stockpile. We have over 50 million, so we can readily vaccinate them,” he said in an interview.
The government is hoping to vaccinate at least 50 percent of the country’s population and administer booster doses to all health care workers before the year ends.
So far, about 30,108,097 individuals have already been fully vaccinated while about 6,000 medical front-liners have received their additional shots, three days after the booster rollout.
Herbosa said the latest Pfizer shipment also serves as a big boost to the upcoming National Vaccination Days from November 29 to December 1.
“We’ve actually reached about 133 million in secured doses and this delivery has increased our stockpile. It’s good that Pfizer deliveries are continuous. You know very well that this is the preferred brand by many of the Filipinos and it’s also the brand we’re using for our teenagers. So this will help a lot, especially for the coming vaccination days,” he said.
Aside from the fresh Pfizer doses, at least 1,306,000 doses of Moderna and 2,805,000 doses of Sputnik V also landed at NAIA on Friday. (PNA) -rir
