(Eagle News) – Health Secretary Francisco Duque III was vaccinated with Coronavac, a brandname of the Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19, on Friday, April 23.
Duque was given the SInovac jab at around 10 a.m. at the Department of Health office compound where some 70 more DOH officials are also set to be vaccinated. He is vaccinated as part of the A2 sector (elderly group) in the vaccine priority list.
Health Undersecretary Gerardo Bayugo administered the vaccine on Duque.
The vaccination of the health secretary was streamed live in a program of the state-run PTV-4 as part of government’s efforts to convince more Filipinos to get vaccinated as protection against COVID-19.
The Philippine government targets to achieve herd immunity in the country by year-end which can only happen if 70 percent of the population has been vaccinated. For this, the government needs at least 148 million vaccine doses.
So far, some 3,525,600 vaccine doses have already been delivered in the country. Three million of these doses are Sinovac vaccines. The rest, 525,600, are AstraZeneca doses brought by the COVAX Facility of World Health Organization (WHO).
The latest batch of vaccines to arrive in the country was the 500,000 Sinovac doses which were delivered via a Philippine Airlines Flight on Thursday, April 22.
(Eagle News Service)
