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| 2-million Pfizer vaccines donated by the United States through COVAX arrive in the Philippines; nearly 35-million vaccines were delivered in October. Photo: National Task Force Against COVID-19 |
MANILA — The Philippines received an additional 2,098,980 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines donated by the US government via the COVAX facility on Sunday night, October 31.
The United States, as the largest donor to the COVAX facility, has facilitated the delivery of nearly 28 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines, in addition to the more than 20 million doses that the US has directly donated to the country.
“I can only encourage people in the Philippines to get vaccinated, it’s a safe, very effective vaccines and that’s the way our economy and our schools get back to normal,” Chargé d'Affaires Heather Variava of the US Embassy in the Philippines said.
UNICEF Deputy Representative Behzad Noubary congratulated the Philippine government on meeting its goal of receiving over 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine by October.
Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr., NTF Chief Implementer and Vaccine Czar, expressed gratitude to the US government, COVAX, and the American people for the latest donation of COVID-19 vaccines.
The vaccine czar expressed optimism that the country would be able to increase its daily vaccination rate to between 1 and 1.5 million doses, noting that nationwide vaccination of children aged 12 to 17 will begin on November 3.
“We are very confident that we can have 1 million or 1.5 million jabs a day. Before, we thought having 300 to 500 [thousand] jabs a day is impossible but right now, we’re able to achieve more or less 700,000 jabs a day.” Galvez said.
The latest vaccine shipment brings October's total vaccine deliveries to 34,887,870 doses, exceeding projections of approximately 29.5 million doses arriving this month.
Since February, the Philippines has received a total of 106,212,460 doses of COVID-19 vaccine from various manufacturers. (National Task Force Against COVID-19)/PRESS RELEASE)