MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine government is aiming to vaccinate 250,000 to 300,000 individuals per day when the bulk of vaccines arrive in the country, National Task Force against COVID-19 deputy chief implementer Vince Dizon said Wednesday.
This is to achieve the goal of inoculating 50 million individuals in 2021, he added.
“We have a goal of inoculating about 50 million Filipinos this year and to achieve that target, we need to be, for the remainder of the year, especially when the bulk of the vaccines comes in, is roughly about anywhere between 250,000 and 300,000 plus per day to reach that goal,” he said in an interview over ABS CBN News Channel.
Dizon, who is also the country’s testing czar, admitted that the government cannot currently hit its daily target since vaccine supply is “just trickling in.”
“I would maybe give our vaccine cluster a couple of more weeks, a couple of more months so that the bulk of our vaccines can start coming in and then we feel and we believe that we can hit that target,” he said.
COVID-19 vaccination in the country only just started on Monday last week after the arrival of 600,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines.
Also last week, over 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines were delivered.
Galvez earlier said that about 5.2 million to 9.5 million shots from the World Health Organization-led COVAX facility are expected to arrive in the country by the end of the 2nd quarter of 2021.
This will further be augmented by vaccines arriving from Sinovac BioTech and AstraZeneca, and Novovax.
On Monday, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the government has so far administered 44,000 vaccine doses since last week.