The national government will welcome 3.2 million doses of Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines on Thursday, June 10, the biggest single-day vaccine arrival so far.
Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, made the announcement as he graced the rollout of the immunization program for economic frontloners (A4) in Greenhills, San Juan City on Wednesday.
According to Galvez, one million doses of CoronaVac-Sinovac jabs will arrive at 7:30 a.m. at Terminal 2 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Pasay City. The Chinese vaccines will be fetched from Bejing via Cebu Pacific flight 5J671.
Meanwhile, a total of 2,279,160 doses of Pfizer jabs will be delivered at 9 p.m. via a DHL flight. The American vaccines are donations from the COVAX facility and the shipment will land at NAIA Terminal 2.
Galvez said 210,600 doses of Pfizer willbe allocated each for Metro Cebu and Metro Davao while the rest of the supply will go to Metro Manila.
Both the Sinovac and Pfizer jabs will be used for the inoculation of economic frontliners (A4). The vaccines will be stored at the cold chain facility of Pharmaserv Express, Inc. in Marikina City.
Galvez said he expects that the vaccine supply will normalize on June 14 with the arrival of the vaccines.
"We can see that by June 14, the supply will start to normalize with the arrival ," he said.
Aside from the Pfizer and Sinovac, the country is also expecting the delivery of 100,000 doses of Sputnik V from Russia. The vaccines were supposed to be delivered on Tuesday, June 8, but got delayed.
"I really apologize for the delay because I made a promise that we will have seven million doses in May. Considering that all the countries are fighting for the supply, we cannot say if there is going to be a slippage," Galvez said.
In May, the country received only 4.3 million doses of CoronaVac-Sinovac, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer jabs.
"The lacking three million doses will arrive this June," Galvez assured.
Due to the lack of supply, the immunization program has been slowed as cases start to rise in areas outside Metro Manila.