3 million more Sinovac doses arrive in PH
MANILA, Philippines — Three million more doses of Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine which was procured by the national government arrived in the country on Sunday.
The vaccines landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport at around 6 p.m. The jabs were welcomed by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.
According to Galvez, the majority of the vaccines will be distributed to several provinces.
“Sa Region 3, Region 4A, Region 6, Region 7, Region 11 and then ‘yung mga pang-second dose sa NCR,” Galvez said.
The vaccine, however, has yet to receive its Certificate of Analysis (COA) and is only expected to arrive by next week.
“Kasi ito mga bagong gawa kasi ito, so ibig sabihin newly-produced. Unlike before na ‘yung COA hindi nadedelay kasi mga stocks ‘yun,” said Galvez.
(Because these are new works, so it means newly-produced. Unlike before, the COA was not delayed because they were stocked vaccines.)
“So ang mangyayari ang ginagawa natin dito ay talagang ineevaluate ng mabuti ng Sionovac ‘yung mga bagong produkto nila,” he added.
(So what happens is that what we are doing here is that Sionovac really evaluates their new products very well.)
Aside from the Sinovac shipment, Galvez also said 2,020,590 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the COVAX facility are expected to arrive the same day, bringing the total number of vaccine doses received by the country to 64.2 million.
“Ibig sabihin meron na tayong 32 million na mababakunahan (this means we can already vaccinate 32 million people),” said Galvez.
Meanwhile, the total number of vaccine doses administered is now 18,475,950.
“Ito po ay almost 24 percent ng ating tinatawag na target population o ‘yung adult population, or more less 17 percent ng total population ng Pilipinas,” he explained.
(This is almost 24 percent of what we call the target population or the adult population, or more or less 17 percent of the total population of the Philippines.)
Galvez said that 20 million more vaccine doses are expected to arrive next week.
This batch came just a day after more than 960,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine arrived on Saturday.
