The national government may have fallen short in getting more vaccine supplies against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but it surely did well in meeting its targeted number of population for inoculation, a Manila Bulletin’s analysis of the September data from the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 revealed.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said 25 million doses of vaccines would have been delivered in September but only 19,424,000 doses were delivered due to some delays, which he said, were beyond the control of the government.

Still, he said the procurement process last month is not bad since all the vaccines that arrived represented 77.696 percent of its target delivery.

The September delivery brought to 74,707,940 doses the total number of vaccines obtained by the Philippines since it scrambled to have a share of the COVID-19 vaccines in February this year.

It was recalled that President Duterte had vowed to secure COVID-19 vaccines for the last quarter of 2020 but the promise was spoiled anew after “somebody dropped the ball” in procuring millions of doses from the United States.

A big bulk or 16,653,440 doses, or 85.74 percent, of the delivered vaccines in September were procured by the national government, local government units (LGUs), and private sector while 2,770,560 doses, or 14.26 percent, were donations received by the country from the global vaccine sharing initiative, the COVAX facility.

Chinese vaccine manufacturer Sinovac Biotech delivered the most number of supplies with 9.5 million doses of CoronaVac which comprised 48.91 percent of the total delivered jabs.

American manufacturer Pfizer BioNTech brought nearly one third of the supply with 6,376,500 doses (32.83 percent) while Moderna, another US-based company, transported 2,194,300 doses (11.30 percent).

British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca also supplied 1,163,200 doses (5.98 percent) while Russian manufacturer Gamaleya Research Institute produced 190,000 doses (0.98 percent) for the Philippines.

The government achieved its target of having 20 million fully vaccinated individuals by the end of September.

For 30 days, there were a total of 11,894,801 doses that were administered nationwide including 4,494,543 Filipinos who received their first dose and 7,400,258 others who were fully vaccinated.

It raised the total vaccination numbers to 45,950,753 administered doses including 24,389,958 Filipinos who had their first dose and 21,560,795 others who were fully vaccinated.

Galvez said these numbers would continue to increase as the government plans to vaccinate adolescents aged 12 to 17 by October 15.

"Mayroon na tayong enough supply and I believe 'yong pilot lang naman natin initially are only here in Metro Manila. Sa accounting namin, mga 1.2 million lang iyon eh so kayang kaya po natin iyon (We already have enough supply and I believe our pilot implemenation will initially be only here in Metro Manila In our accounting, there are only 1.2 million so we can do it)," he said on Friday.

Despite the challenges in the vaccination program, the vaccine czar expressed optimism that the government will be able to meet its target of vaccinating 77 million Filipinos by the end of 2021 to achieve herd immunity. (Martin A. Sadongdong)