The Duterte administration is working non-stop to procure COVID-19 vaccines for the Filipino people, vaccine czar and National Task Force against COVID-19 Chief Implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Sunday.
“Rest assured that the Duterte administration has been relentless in acquiring these vaccines to ensure that the country will have a fair share of the doses,” Galvez said in a statement.
He also addressed the slow vaccine rollout and stressed that the current batch of vaccines that arrived in the country is reserved solely for health care workers.
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“The inoculation of medical workers must be carried out in a deliberate manner. Considering the crucial task they perform, their vaccination must be done in batches in light of possible adverse effects and the impact on the manning requirements of health facilities,” Galvez explained.
Almost 90 percent of the vaccines have already been deployed in the past two weeks.
He added that the vaccine rollout will pick up its pace once the country will have sufficient supply and all medical frontliners are inoculated.
However, Galvez noted that low vaccine supply hinders the vaccination rollout adding that the bulk of the vaccines secured by the Philippine government will arrive by the second half of 2021.
‘As much as we would like to conduct a full-scale vaccination program, we are, however, constrained by the current limited supply of vaccines in the world market. And this is the same problem being faced by most nations around the world,” he said.
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The Philippines has received 600,000 Sinovac doses donated by the Chinese government and 525,600 vaccines from AstraZeneca from COVAX facility.
Another batch of one million doses of Sinovac is expected to arrive in the country on March 21.
Meanwhile, Galvez said he visited India to directly negotiate with vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India to secure short and long-term supplies of COVID-19 jabs.
He also added that another team will fly to Russia to further conduct a study on the Sputnik V vaccine developed by Gamaleya. (RA)
