The national government is looking forward to administer 55 million vaccine doses against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in October by including children and the general population in the national inoculation program.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez said at a pre-recorded public address of President Duterte which aired Tuesday, Sept. 28, that the target would be achieved if the vaccine supply reaches 100 million next month. So far, the country has around 70 million vaccine doses.
"We will ramp up our deliveries at least makareach tayo ng (to at least reach) 100 million by the end of the month so that we can open up more vaccination for other sectors like children and adolescent. We will administer 55 million plus doses at pwede pa umakyat kapag nagkaroon ng mas mataas na capacity ang LGUs at key cities (and this could increase if the local government units and key cities will have bigger capacity)," Galvez said during the "Talk to the People" public address.
As of Monday, a total of 44,361,285 doses have been administered nationwide: there were 23,777,705 Filipinos that have received their first shot while 20,583,580 others have been fully vaccinated.
By the end of September, Galvez hopes that this would reach 45 million as he looks to utilize 10 million vaccines next month.
The National Capital Region (NCR) has the most number of fully vaccinated individuals at around seven million or 71.86 percent of the total 9.78 million adult population.
"By end of the month, mag-80 percent na po ang NCR kasi nagse-second dosing na sila at kayang-kaya nila 'yon (the NCR will reach 80 percent in fully vaccinated population because they are already administering second doses so they can do it)," Galvez said.
Meanwhile, other regions have also started catching up with the vaccination rate of NCR including Davao (Region 11), Calabarzon (Region 4-A), Central Luzon (Region 3), Central Visayas (Region 7), Eastern Visayas (Region 6), and Northern Mindanao (Region 10) with at least 31 percent fully vaccinated population among their adult residents.
He noted that the government aims to raise the number of fully vaccinated individuals in other key cities to at least 50 percent by October.
To do this, Galvez said the government will seek to speed up the vaccination program by administering 500,000 to 800,000 doses daily.
The daily vaccination throughput on Monday was 427,203 while the average doses administered in the pst seven days was 366,765.
Galvez said several "vaccine challenges contributed to the slower vaccination rate in the past days including the delay in the delivery of vaccines in the first week of September and the surge of cases which "diverted the attention" of local chief executives.