China and the United States will deliver two million doses of Sinovac vaccines and 250,000 doses of Moderna jabs respectively to the country this week, the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 confirmed Wednesday, June 23.
The NTF said Sinovac's CoronaVac vaccines will arrive on Thursday, June 24, while the Moderna jabs will be transported on Sunday, June 27.
The Sinovac vaccines will be fetched by a Cebu Pacific commercial flight (5J671) in Beijing, and it is expected to arrive around 7:30 a.m. at Terminal 2 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Pasay City.
The Sinovac vaccines will be transferred to a cold chain facility of the Pharmaserv Express, Inc. in Marikina City for proper handling and storage.
The NTF said 1.5 million doses of the Sinovac vaccines were ordered by the national government while an additional 500,000 were purchased by IP Biotech, a local biotechnology company.
Meanwhile, the Moderna jabs will be the first tranche of such vaccines to be delivered in the country. The US-made vaccines were supposed to arrive on June 21 but it got delayed due to logistical problems.
The NTF has yet to release more details for the arrival of the Moderna jabs.
The national government has secured 20 million doses of Moderna vaccines through a tripartite agreement with the private sector. Of the supply, 13 million doses were purchased by the government while seven million were bought by the private sector.
Once the Sinovac and Moderna deliveries are completed, it will raise the country's total supply of COVID-19 vaccines to 16,455,870 doses.