Photo: PTV live screengrab
MANILA, Philippines — A total of 1,196,910 doses of the US-made Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the country on Monday.
The delivered vaccine doses consist of 924,300 doses that arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) at around 4:15 p.m. The doses were donated by the United States government to the country through the COVAX facility. Later at 9:20 p.m., an additional 272,610 Pfizer vaccine doses that were procured by the national government arrived.
The donated vaccines were the second batch of the total vaccines donated through COVAX after 918,450 doses arrived in the Philippines on Sunday.
In total 1,842,750 doses of donated COVID-19 vaccines have arrived in the country since Oct. 10, as well as 272,610 doses of vaccines procured by the government.
According to Kevin Riley, political officer at the US Embassy in Manila, the US has pledged to work with COVAX to provide enough vaccines to vaccinate 1 out of 5 Filipinos.
“We’re hoping that these government-procured vaccines will help with that,” said Riley.
Currently, 26,486,522 individuals have already received their first dose while 23,186,969 others have been fully vaccinated.