The impending jump in the delivery rate of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines starting this month will make a huge impact on the government's mass inoculation program, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said late Monday night, May 3.
Galvez, vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech remains as the biggest supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to the country. It will deliver 1.5 million doses of its CoronaVac vaccines on May 7 and another 500,000 doses before month's end.
"Sa May 7 mag-scale up na po ang Sinovac. Dati tig-500,000 lang po ang kanyang dating, ngayon one tranche is 1.5 million na po sa May 7. Maganda po dahil tataas po ang ating rollout (On May 7, Sinovac will have a scale up in its delivery. Before, the delivery consisted of 500,000 doses only, but now it will be 1.5 million doses in one tranche on May 7. It is good because our rollout will also go up)," Galvez told President Duterte during the latter's "Talk to the Nation" public address.
He said the average inoculations per day will likely increase to 70,000 or 90,000 from just 30,000 once the additional supply of vaccines arrive.
Aside from the Sinovac jabs, around one to two million doses of Sputnik V vaccines from Russian manufacturer Gamaleya Research Institute are also set for delivery this month.
By June, around 10.2 million doses from various sources are expected to be delivered. These vaccines will come from Sinovac (4.5 million doses), Gamaleya (two million), AstraZeneca (1.3 million), and Moderna (194,000). The Covax facility has also committed 2,355,210 United States (US)-made Pfizer vaccines during the same period.
Galvez said that as of May 3, a total of 1,658,539 Filipinos have already been inoculated against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the country has so far received 4,040,600 doses, of which 3,745,120 (92.68 percent) have already been distributed to various hospitals nationwide.