The vaccine allocation for uniformed and civilian personnel of the Philippine National Police (PNP) was jacked up from 800 to 1,200 doses after more personnel expressed intention to get inoculated and be protected against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a ranking official bared Friday.
Lt. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, PNP deputy chief for administration, said the police force received an additional 400 doses last Tuesday for the vaccination of its police medical frontliners. The PNP rolled out its vaccination program last Monday.
"Our allocation or target was adjusted to 1,200 PNP healthcare workers," he said.
Eleazar made the remark along with an announcement that the percentage of PNP personnel who committed to have themselves inoculated using the current supply of vaccines has also increased.
"As of now, 78 percent of all PNP personnel are willing to be vaccinated," he said, noting that the new data was higher than the 70.14-percent recorded last week.
As of Thursday, a total of 985 PNP personnel already received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccines. There has been a steady rise in the number of PNP personnel who are getting the jabs, with 125 cops vaccinated on March 1; 180 on March 2; 353 on March 3; and 327 on March 4.
Eleazar said the vaccination of PNP frontline workers will continue until all doses of Sinovac vaccines have been used.
Meanwhile, Eleazar said that they have yet to confirm whether additional vaccine doses from British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca will also be alloted for the police force.
A total of 487,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines arrived on Thursday night in the country as part of the initial shipment secured by the government from the COVAX facility.
The surge in the number of police personnel who want to be vaccinated came as a positive development even as more cops were infected by COVID-19. As of Thursday, 76 new COVID-19 cases among police personnel were recorded by the PNP which brought the total number of cases to 11,575.
Another 48 cops also recovered from the disease, raising the number of recoveries to 10,993 or around 95 percent of the total cases in the PNP. The death toll from the disease remained at 31.