(Eagle News) – Some three million doses of Sinovac vaccines arrived in the country on Thursday, Aug. 19, becoming the largest delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in a single day.
The three million Sinovac doses which were purchased from China arrived just a day after 365,040 doses of Pfizer vaccines arrived in the country. The latest deliveries bring to almost 46 million doses the total vaccines delivered so far.
The Philippine Airlines aircraft carrying the Sinovac vaccines landed at 5:48 p.m. Thursday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 2. The fourth batch of government-procured Pfizer vaccines, on the other hand, arrived on Wednesday night, Aug, 18, at the NAIA terminal 3.
Secretary Carlito G. Galvez, Jr. National Task Force Against COVID-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar led the government delegation that received the biggest delivery of the Sinovac vaccines.
“Sa lahat ng procurement natin, ito ang pinakamalaking delivery and we are so happy that we were accommodated by Sinovac Biotech na talagang mabigyan tayo ng 3 million kasi kailangang kailangan natin sa mga probinsya,” Galvez said during an interview at the airport.
A total 25.5 million doses of Sinovac vaccines have so far been delivered to the Philippines. Of these doses, 23,600,000 were procured by the national government, 900,000 were purchased by a local government unit and private sector, and 1 million donated by the Chinese government.
Meanwhile, Cebu City and Davao City received 51,480 doses each of the delivered Pfizer doses from the fourth batch of government-procured Pfizer. The remaining 262,080 doses from the fourth batch were immediately delivered to the PharmaServ Express’ cold-chain facility in Marikina City for temporary storage. This is for deployment to Metro Manila and other areas which have not yet received Pfizer vaccines.
On Wednesday night, US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires John C. Law joined Galvez in welcoming the arrival of the Pfizer vaccines.
To date, the country has received a total of 2,472,210 donated Pfizer doses coming from the COVAX facility. The government, on the other hand, has purchased 40 million Pfizer doses. Of this number, 2,116,530 Pfizer doses have so far been delivered by the American pharmaceutical firm.
(Eagle News Service)
