Gov’t aims to vaccinate 2 million Filipinos vs COVID-19 this month

MANILA, Philippines — The government aims to vaccinate about two million Filipinos this month, raising the previous monthly average of one million vaccinations per month, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., the country’s vaccine manager, said Monday during the weekly pre-recorded briefing of President Rodrigo Duterte.

According to Galvez, the monthly average of COVID-19 vaccinations since the start of vaccination in March was only one million.

“We will strive to raise it to two million per month,” he said in Filipino

About four million COVID-19 vaccine doses are expected to arrive in the country this month, including 1.5 million doses of CoronaVac from China’s Sinovac BioTech, which will arrive on May 7, and one to two million doses of  Sputnik V from Russia’s Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology.

The government has so far deployed 3,745,120 out of 4,040,600 vaccine doses to several vaccination sites, Galvez said.

A total of 1,658,539 Filipinos have been vaccinated. The total number of doses used so far is 1,948,080, as some people have already received their second dose of the vaccine.

Herd immunity

Galvez said the country would need 15 million doses of COVID-19 per month to be able to vaccinate 70% of the population and achieve herd immunity before the end of the year.

This would entail administering 500,000 doses per day and three million doses per week.

According to Galvez, this is doable since there are already 5,000 vaccination sites nationwide and each would only need to administer 100 jabs a day to reach the quota.

A total of 25,000 to 50,000 vaccinators would also be needed to help administer the jabs, he added.

He said he expects the vaccine supply would rise to 10 million doses in June and about 15 million doses from July until December.

“That’s our objective in procurement. That’s what we want to get — to raise it to 15 million,” Galvez said.

However, he foresees “further constriction” of the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines, especially with some countries, including India, barring their export.

The delivery of vaccines from India may be delayed, but the vaccine supply will be augmented by other manufacturers, he said.

[atm]