500,000 more vaccines from China’s Sinovac arrive in Manila

MANILA, Philippines — An additional 500,000 doses of CoronaVac, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac BioTech, arrived in the Philippines on Thursday afternoon.

The procured doses of vaccine arrived at NAIA Terminal 2 at past 5 p.m. on Philippine Airlines flight PR359, according to a report by state-run media PTV.

This is the second batch of vaccines to arrive in the country this month after the delivery of 500,000 CoronaVac doses on April 11.

READ: 500,000 vaccines from China’s Sinovac arrive in Manila

Meanwhile, this is the third batch of CoronaVac purchased by the Philippines. The government has bought about 25 million doses of the vaccine, which should be available by the end of the year.

READ: Procured 1-M doses of CoronaVac arrive in PH

Carlito Galvez Jr., the vaccine czar, spoke at a Palace briefing on Thursday, saying that the 500,000 doses of CoronaVac are expected to be distributed within one week, with 100,000 of them to go to Metro Manila, the pandemic epicenter.

Vaccine czar,Carlito Galvez Jr.1 says 100,000 of the CoronaVac doses will go to Metro Manila, the pandemic epicenter. —AFP FILE PHOTO

He said earlier that 1.5 million CoronaVac doses are expected to arrive in the Philippines in April, along with 500,000 doses of Gamaleya Institute’s Sputnik V vaccine.

READ: Gov’t expects delivery of 2M doses of CoronaVac, Sputnik V this month

At a Palace briefing on Thursday, Galvez said 15,000 Sputnik V vaccines are set to be delivered on April 25, while 480,000 will arrive on April 29.

Aside from the purchased vaccines, China has donated one million CoronaVac vaccines in two batches: 600,000 were delivered on Feb. 23 and 400,000 on March 24.

READ: PH receives 400K more Sinovac vaccine doses from China

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