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Healthcare workers and employees of the Philippine General Hospital are registering for the COVID-19 vaccination, expected to arrive this month, at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila, Philippines.
Image Credit: Reuters
Manila: The Philippines will receive 600,000 doses this month of the Sinovac Biotech COVID-19 vaccine donated by China, a portion of which will be used to inoculate military personnel, a senior government official said Thursday.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque told a regular news conference that the arrival of the vaccines on February 23 is safe, but that they would not be administered without approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
So far, only injections developed by AstraZeneca and the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech have been approved for emergency use in the country.
Roque said regulators have allowed the “compassionate use” of 10,000 doses of a vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm for President Rodrigo Duterte’s security detail.
Roque said 100,000 of the 600,000 doses of Sinovac will be given to soldiers and the rest to medical workers.
The Philippines aims to begin its mass vaccination program using 117,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine obtained through the international vaccine exchange facility COVAX, which will also be delivered this month.
The Philippines has negotiated supply agreements with Moderna, Gamaleya, Janssen, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Novavax for 148 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, most of which are expected to arrive in the second and third quarters of this year. .
This year it aims to vaccinate 70 million adults, or two-thirds of the country’s 108 million people, to achieve herd immunity.
The Philippines has recorded 541,000 infections, including 11,400 deaths.
