The Philippines has received one million more doses of CoronaVac vaccines, which were procured by the national government from Chinese manufacturer Sinovac Biotech.
The shipment was loaded on a Cebu Pacific plane via flight 5J671 which fetched the vaccines from Beijing, China. It arrived at Bay 49 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2 at 7:36 a.m.
Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, and Health Secretary Francisco Duque III welcomed the 9th shipment of COVID-19 vaccines from China. They were accompanied by representatives from the Chinese Embassy in Manila.
From NAIA, the vaccines were loaded into two 10-wheeler closed refrigerated trucks and two six-wheeler refrigerated closed vans before they were transported to the warehouse of Pharmaserv Express, Inc. in Marikina City.
Escorted by the Philippine National Police - Highway Patrol Group (PNP-HPG) and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the vaccines arrived at the cold storage facility of Pharmaserv around 9 a.m.
Galvez expressed elation with the arrival of more vaccines in the country as he said that the government is ramping up the vaccination program. With the delivery, the vaccine supply has increased to 9,329,500 doses.
He said that the vaccines will be given to areas with high number of cases in Visayas and Mindanao which have seen an alarming uptick of cases in recent weeks.
The Department of Health (DOH) said on June 1 that while the cases in NCR Plus 8 were plateauing, there was a "gradual increase" of cases in Visayas while cases in Mindanao were "increasing at a faster rate."
Meanwhile, the vaccine czar assured the local government units (LGUs) in the "NCR Plus," a group of areas in Greater Manila Area with high record of infections, that they will be the recipient of the arriving vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. These include the National Capital Region, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.
According to Galvez, 2.2 million doses of Pfizer will arrive from June 10 to 11 while another batch of one million Sinovac jabs will be delivered on June 10.
There are also 250,000 doses of Moderna, two million doses of AstraZeneca, and two million doses of Sputnik V that are expected to be shipped in mid-June, he added.