PASIG CITY (20 September 2021) – The country has so far received a total of 64,942,000 vaccine doses, of which 9,586,270 doses were delivered from September 13 to 19, making it the highest weekly delivery since February when the country started receiving vaccines from various manufacturers.

Of these shipments, 6,171,590 million doses arrived over the weekend. Meanwhile, 561,600 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech from COVAX facility arrived on Monday evening.

This developed as the national government continues to build up the Philippines’ COVID-19 vaccine inventory with the steady arrival of larger shipments of government-procured and donated vaccine supplies.

“We are very happy with the developments in our vaccine acquisition efforts especially with the recent deliveries,“ said National Task Force against COVID 19 Chief Implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr.

“This is a testament of our collective effort — from the national government, the local government units, the private sector, and the global community — in securing much-needed doses for our people,” Galvez added.

Of the more than 9.58 million doses delivered last week, 6.65 million combined doses of Sinovac, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sputnik V vaccines were procured by the national government, 909,400 doses of Astrazeneca and Moderna vaccines were purchased by the private sector and local government units (LGUs), and 2.02 million doses were donations from the COVAX facility.

“We are now beginning to reap the benefits of having a forward-looking and sustainable plan in our vaccine procurement. We will continue to negotiate and hopefully sustain this bulk allocation and delivery schedule in the coming weeks,” Galvez said.

The vaccine czar earlier announced that more than 34 million doses are expected to be delivered this month from various sources and manufacturers. Of this number, 13,041,410 doses have been delivered.

Sustaining bulk deliveries

Meanwhile, Galvez shared that the vaccine manufacturers and the national government are currently negotiating to scale up the country’s monthly allocation beginning this month.

He noted that despite most of the supply contracts indicating that the volume of the Philippines’ orders will be shipped in the fourth quarter, the NTF has continued to engage with the vaccine manufacturers as part of its aggressive efforts to secure additional vaccine doses.

“We are grateful to our embassies and our consular offices around the globe for their hard work and determination to help our country access and secure the 30 million doses that we need monthly,” he said.

As of September 19, 41,414,015 jabs have been administered nationwide, of which 18,560,409 are fully vaccinated individuals or 24.06% of the country’s 77 million target population.

On the other hand, more than 22.85 million vaccine doses have been administered as the first shot.

In the National Capital Region, 84.47% of its target population have received at least one dose, while 66.37% have been fully inoculated.

Other areas throughout the country have started to scale up their vaccine rollout since the national government implemented its recalibrated vaccine deployment strategy, wherein the bulk of the allocations are deployed to provinces and regions with a high number of cases.

The Cordillera Administrative Region has now fully vaccinated 26.64% of its target population. Region XI has completely inoculated 22.40% of its residents, while CALABARZON and Region VII have fully vaccinated 21.35% and 20.85% of their populations, respectively, according to the data from the National Vaccination Operations Center.

“The latest vaccine deliveries will continue to be deployed to the regions and provinces across the country as part of our efforts to fully vaccinate the Filipino people,” said Galvez. END