Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. again issued an apology late Tuesday night, July 6 over the delay in the delivery of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines, which has affected the speed of the national government's immunization program.

Galvez, who is also the chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said the delays could be attributed to the "lean weeks" which usually happen in the first or last week of the month when the foreign vaccine manufacturers usually don't send shipments of the jabs.

"Humihingi po kami ng pasensya na hindi po namin mapigilan ang delay ng deliveries na nakapagslow down sa ating rollout (We ask for forgiveness because we cannot stop the delay in the deliveries which has slowed down our rollout)," he said during President Duerte's pre-recorded public address.

In June, Galvez apologized to the public after the country experienced an inadequacy of vaccines with the delayed deliveries during the first week of that month.

"May tinatawag po tayo na lean weeks o tagtuyot na mga araw na napakahirap ng mga supply during the first week and last week of the month (We have what we call lean weeks or drought days where the supply is difficult to access during the first and last week of the month)," he explained.

He said vaccine manufacturers often prepare the supplies on the first week of the month prior to the scheduled deliveries while an inventory and re-deployment of vaccines is usually done on the last week, making the deliveries on these periods almost impossible to achieve.

"Ang ating mga vaccines dumarating during the second week, third week at fourth week na ng buwan (Our vaccines often arrive during the second week, third week, and fourth week of the month)," he noted.

This month, a total of 16,205,240 doses of COVID-19 vaccines are expected to be delivered to the country.

These include 170,000 doses of Sputnik V which will be transported on July 7; 1,124,100 doses of AstraZeneca from the donation of Japan, which will arrive on July 8; 3.024 million doses of Johnson and Johnson (JnJ) which are part of the United States' donation via the COVAX facility that will be delivered midweek of the month; and another 2.028 million doses of AstraZeneca from the COVAX facility, which will also arrive by midweek.

Also, the 1.17 million doses of AstraZeneca that were procured by the private sector and the three million doses of Sinovac bought by the government will arrive on July 18. The Sinovac delivery was supposed to take place on the first week of July as the first transaction this month, but it was delayed by almost two weeks due to an undisclosed reason.

On July 19, a total of 562,770 doses of Pfizer will be delivered to the country, which will be followed by the delivery of 250,800 doses of Moderna any day between July 21 to 27; another 2.5 million doses of Sinovac between July 24 and 25; a total of 375,570 doses of Pfizer on July 26; and two million doses of Sinovac between July 30 and 31.

In August, a total of 14.17 million doses of vaccines will be shipped to the country. These vaccines include Sinovac, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and a yet to be disclosed supply from the COVAX facility.

As of July 5, the vaccine supply in the country stood at 17,455,470 doses, of which 15.34 million have already been deployed while 2.1 million will be used as buffer stock for the second dose vaccination.

A total of 11.9 million doses have already been administered nationwide with 9.04 million doses given as first shot while 2.92 million doses were used as second shot.

Vaccinators in the National Capital Region (NCR), considered as the epicenter of pandemic in the country, have administered 4.89 million doses since March, the most among the 17 regions.

It was followed by Calabarzon with 1.08 million administered doses; Central Luzon with 828,349; Central Visayas (Region 7) with 450,071; and Davao (Region 11) with 391,333.

The Bangsamoro Autnomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) has the least number of administered doses among the regions with 88,194.