MANILA, Philippines — An additional 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from the global initiative COVAX facility is expected to be delivered to the Philippines in the coming weeks, an official of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.
WHO Country Representative Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe said the organization, which spearheaded the initiative, is eyeing to increase its vaccine allocation to the Philippines as well as to other countries to help them achieve population protection.
“We are looking at increasing vaccine allocations for the Philippines. COVAX has allocated further 10 million doses to come to the Philippines within the next few weeks,” he said in a televised public briefing.
“We expect much larger consignments to come within this third and fourth quarters to the Philippines and to many other countries who are recipients of COVAX vaccines,” he added.
So far, the COVAX facility has already given 13 million doses of the vaccine to the Philippines, three million of which are single-dose Johnson&Johnson vaccines while the rest are two-dose.
Abeyasinghe said this is equivalent to eight million Filipinos vaccinated against COVID-19.
So far, there are about 17 million Filipinos that are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 22 million individuals have received at least one dose.