Over 5 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been given to Filipinos across several priority categories.
Of this number, around 5,120,023 individuals in the country have received the jab with 1,189,353 already having received two doses, according to official sources.
While these figures include about 1.4 million (93 %) of the country’s health workers with 664,000 fully inoculated, total 1,368,836 (13.38 %) of 9 million senior citizens and 1.15 million persons or 22.7 percent of those with comorbidities have also received their vaccines, Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said on Sunday.
While the Philippines is eyeing 500,000 daily Covid-19 jabs to achieve herd immunity, the government needs to conduct 500,000 jabs daily in Metro Manila, Metro Davao, Metro Cebu, and 6 other urban areas to achieve herd immunity by November 27, Galvez pointed out.
Expressing confidence of vaccine containment of the virus by August or September for over 30 percent of the population, Galvez told ABS-CBN’s TeleRadyo that the local governments – with a steady supply of vaccine –could meet their target with the best scenario being September or October, over even first quarter of 2022.
During a meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte early this month, Galvez said the government aims to achieve herd containment by September this year by inoculating 25-50 million of the population.
With this, hospitalization and deaths due to Covid-19 are expected to be reduced, and – once vaccination coverage rises to 58-70 million, herd immunity would have been achieved, he said.
The Government is expecting around 10 million Filipinos to be inoculated by June once the Philippines receives 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Galvez furthered that around 2.2 million Pfizer jabs, arranged through the global alliance COVAX facility, will arrive between June 7 and 11, apart from another 1 million Sinovac jabs on June 6.
