More than 40 million doses of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines have been administered nationwide, a feat that was achieved ahead of the schedule, the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 bared Saturday, Sept. 18.
Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr., vaccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said the feat was achieved last Sept. 15 with 40,033,388 shots administered.
"Ang inaasahan namin na 40 million administration, ang projection namin ay end of September. Talagang nahatak natin, nakuha nang mas maaaga (We expect in our projection that the 40 million administration will be by end of September. We managed to pull it through, we did it earlier)," he said in a statement.
Since then, around 500,000 more COVID-19 shots were administered. As of September 16, the National Vaccination Operations Center (NVOC) said 40,518,845 doses were already given nationwide.
Of this, 22,541,383 Filipinos have received their first dose while 17,977,462 have been fully vaccinated. The fully-jabbed individuals represent around 23 percent of the target 77 million adult Filipinos that are eligible to receive the vaccine.
"We are looking forward that by the end of September, more than 20 million people will be fully vaccinated," Galvez said.
The daily average vaccination rate currently stands at 421,606 doses.
"This is a testament that our vaccination program is on track and is continuously scaling up despite the multiple challenges that we faced in the past weeks," said the vaccine czar.