Photo from National Task Force against COVID-19
MANILA, Philippines — An additional two million doses of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) on Saturday afternoon.
The vaccines were delivered via a Singapore Airlines flight from The Netherlands and landed at the NAIA Terminal 3 at 12:49 p.m., according to the National Task Force against COVID-19.
The latest batch of AstraZeneca vaccine composed of 2,030,400 doses was sent to the country by the COVAX Facility, a global initiative aimed at ensuring a fair and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.
The latest delivery brings the country’s supply of COVID-19 vaccine doses to over 7.5 million–2.5 million AstraZeneca doses, 5 million CoronaVac doses of Sinovac Biotech, and 15,000 Sputnik V doses from Gamaleya Institute.
Photo from National Task Force against COVID-19
As of May 4, over 2 million doses have already been administered to priority groups for vaccination, including 1.7 million doses given as first dose and 320,586 as second shots.
The arrival of AstraZeneca vaccines comes in time after the Department of Health (DOH) announced on Friday the official resumption of vaccination with the product for those aged below 60.
The DOH earlier suspended the administration of the vaccine for those in the said age group following reports of very rare cases of Vaccine-Induced Thrombosis and Thrombocytopenia (VITT) on those inoculated in other countries.
The DOH, however, said health authorities have concluded following a review that “there are currently no known risk factors for VITT and that the benefits of receiving the vaccine against COVID-19 still outweigh the risks.”