(PNA photo by Avito Dalan)
MANILA – The bulk of Covid-19 vaccine deliveries this September will come from US manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna, as more than 14.89 million doses are expected to arrive in the country in the coming weeks.
This was announced by National Task Force Against Covid-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. following the reallocation notice from the COVAX Facility, as well as the latest update from Moderna on the deliveries of government and private sector-procured vaccines.
“We are very pleased with this good news, especially that many of our local government units, particularly those in the provinces, have started to scale up their vaccine rollout and expand their coverage to include the A4 and A5 priority groups,” Galvez said.
“These will boost our inoculation program, as we firm up the guidelines on the vaccination of the general public and prepare for the rollout for teenagers or those 12 to 17 years old as we wait for the approval of the members of our vaccine expert panel,” he added.
The COVAX Facility has updated its Pfizer-BioNTech allocation for the Philippines for the third quarter of 2021, in which deliveries to the country will increase from 188,370 doses to 10,188,360 doses.
COVAX re-allocation
According to the letter sent to task force officials, the additional doses were due to the standard reallocation process of the facility.
Last Sept. 2, COVAX delivered 188,370 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech to the country. The rest of the committed supplies will be delivered in two tranches, comprising 4,354,740 doses and 5,645,250 doses, respectively.
Galvez said Moderna has started to make arrangements for the shipment of the procured 4,712,770 doses to the Philippines.
The initial shipment containing 1,250,000 doses is scheduled to arrive this week.
Two batches of the Moderna vaccine are due to arrive on Sept. 19. The first shipment will contain 1,270,720 doses, while the second shipment will have 1,231,050 doses.
The Philippines has secured a total of 20 million doses from Moderna, of which thirteen million doses were procured by the national government, while seven million doses were purchased by the private sector. As of Sept. 15, a total of 1.29 million doses were delivered to the country.
“We thank the relentless effort exerted by our Philippine Embassy in Washington led by Ambassador Babes [Romualdez] to ensure that Moderna will increase its allocation for the country this month,” Galvez said.
Based on the supply agreement with Moderna, the bulk of the vaccine orders will be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year, Galvez said.
He bared that Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez held negotiations through the White House in order to further increase the monthly allocation of all US-made vaccines procured by the Philippines.
Aside from Moderna, the government also procured a total of 40 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. The company is set to ship out more than five million doses this month.
So far, Pfizer has delivered 3.18 million doses of the country’s procured orders. Bigger volumes of the secured doses will be delivered beginning October.
LGUs must be ready
Galvez said that with the arrival of more highly-sensitive vaccines, local government units across the country must ensure that they are prepared to accept their respective allocations.
He noted that the current vaccine deployment strategy is now focused on provinces and regions with a high number of cases.
This strategy would allow the national government to close the gap between the fully vaccinated individuals in Metro Manila and other regions.
As of Sept. 14, there are now 17,348,671 fully vaccinated individuals in the country. Of this number, more than six million individuals are from the National Capital Region (NCR).
The NCR has already completed the inoculation of 62.30 percent of its target population, while the rest of the country is still below 25 percent.
“The LGUs must be ready for these types of vaccines. And we don’t necessarily mean they need to procure ultra-low freezers as there are many supply chain management companies that offer these services. What is important is that they will have well-trained personnel that are capable of handling as well as administering the vaccines,” Galvez said.
Out of the 187.6 million doses secured by the Philippines from different manufacturers and sources for 2021, 56,794,130 doses have been delivered.
The vaccine czar said the NTF continues to negotiate with manufacturers to increase the country’s monthly deliveries to 25 to 30 million doses.
For the month of September, the Philippines is expecting to receive more than 34 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.
These are composed of 12 million doses of Sinovac, 10 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech from COVAX Facility, five million doses of government-procured Pfizer, four million doses of government and private sector-procured Moderna, one million doses of Sputnik Light, one million doses of the private sector and LGU-procured AstraZeneca, and one million doses donated by a partner country. (PR)
