With the arrival of more vaccines, the national government is planning to expand the inoculation program against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Metro Manila, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. said Tuesday, May 11.
In a statement, Galvez, vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said at least 120,000 individuals in the National Capital Region (NCR) are targeted to be vaccinated daily once it has a stable stock of 3.3 million vaccines every month.
"With the increasing number of vaccine volumes and continuous arrival of our supply, our vaccination output will likewise increase. Once we have a stable supply and have at least 3.3 million doses on stock monthly in Metro Manila, we will start expanding our operations to inoculate at least 120,000 individuals in NCR," he said.
Once achieved, he said herd immunity is likley to be reached by November 2021 in NCR. Metro Manila is considered as the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consequently, the government is also eyeing to vaccinate 500,000 individuals daily nationwide beginning in the third quarter of the year to achieve herd immunity for the entire country, Galvez noted.
The country has a current vaccine supply of 7,764,050 doses.
On Monday night, the initial batch of Pfizer vaccines were delivered to the Philippines through the Covax facility.
"We are very thankful to Covax and Pfizer-BioNTech for keeping its commitment to deliver these life-saving doses, especially at this crucial period when we ramping up our vaccination output monthly," Galvez said.
There were also recent deliveries from Russia's Gamaleya Research Institute (15,000 doses of Sputnik V), China's Sinovac Biotech (1.5 million doses of CoronaVac), and British-Swedish firm Oxford-AstraZeneca (two million doses of AstraZeneca) last May 1, 7, and 8 respectively.
As of May 9, more than 1.9 million Filipinos have already received their first dose of vaccines while over 451,000 others were given their second dose.
The World Health Organization (WHO) lauded this development as an "extraordinary accomplishment," according to Galvez, considering that the inoculation program only started less than two months ago, or on March 1.
The government is planning to vaccinate 58 million to 70 million Filipinos by year-end to achieve herd immunity.
Galvez said this can be achieved by scaling up the country's monthly vaccination rate to two million individuals starting May, and four million individuals in June.