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MANILA – The Philippines will receive about 2.3 million additional doses of COVID-19 vaccine this month or early April, the country’s vaccine czar said on Monday, amid a surge in new cases.
Chief Implementer of the National COVID-19 Task Force Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. expects 1.4 million more doses of vaccine from China-based Sinovac, and nearly one million doses from UK-based AstraZeneca.
“In this month or early April, 979,200 AstraZeneca [shots will arrive], with a total of 2,379,200 doses for March or early April, “he said.
Meanwhile, President Rodrigo Duterte said the Philippines still does not have sufficient vaccine stocks, amid criticism that the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine in the country has been slow since it began on March 1.
“So far, we don’t have a surplus (of vaccines). I mean, no one came except donated ones, you just donated China and WHO. It’s free,” Duterte said.
(So far, we don’t have any additional vaccines. That means nothing other than those donated by China and WHO has arrived yet. They are free.)
The country received 600,000 injections from Sinovac and more than 500,000 strokes from AstraZeneca earlier this month, courtesy of Beijing and the COVAX Facility, respectively. COVAX is an initiative that aims at equitable access to vaccines, led by WHO.
The Philippines reported last Saturday its largest single-day increase in COVID-19 cases in more than 6 months and its first case of the highly contagious variant first identified in Brazil.
It then recorded 5,404 new infections on Monday, the fourth highest reported in a day since the start of the pandemic in the country, bringing the total number of cases to 626,893.
Amid public criticism that it failed to curb COVID-19 transmissions, Malacañang said the government is not to blame for the increase, even as the Philippines marked the first year of its pandemic lockdown.
“The confirmation that the new variants are in the Philippines and that the new variants are more contagious, this is one of the reasons for the increase, and not because the government is careless,” Palace spokesman Harry Roque said in Filipino.
With 621,498 coronavirus infections, the Philippines has the second highest number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia.
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