Over 700-K healthcare workers, senior citizens receive 1st vaccine dose – DOH

MANILA, Philippines — Over 4,000 senior citizens have already received their first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, taking the overall number of people immunized in the country to more than 700,000, according to a Department of Health (DOH) official on Tuesday.

During a House health committee meeting, DOH Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje reported that as of March 29, as many as 702,362 people received their first vaccine dose.

This figure is composed of 698,353 healthcare workers and 4,009 senior citizens, she said.

According to the DOH official, there are over 1.27 million masterlisted vaccine recipients among healthcare workers (A1) and more than 1.43 million among senior citizens (A2).

READ: LIST: Priority groups for government’s Covid-19 vaccination program

“Simultaneous or parallel vaccination with the next group, the A2: senior citizens, have started in the NCR (National Capital Region) using the available vaccines from the different hospitals,” Cabotaje told lawmakers.

“All in all, we have a total of [over] 702,000 individuals. Both the frontline health workers and the A2 senior citizens given their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines,” she added.

The country began its vaccination drive on March 1st, following the delivery of 600,000 doses of CoronaVac vaccine from Sinovac Biotech donated by the Chinese government.

On March 4, 487,200 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from British-Swede firm AstraZeneca arrived in the country through the Covax facility. This was followed by another set of 38,400 doses that arrived on March 7.

The country also received 1 million doses of Sinovac’s vaccine on Mar. 29 procured by the government.

abc