More than 860,000 doses of United States-made Pfizer coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine were delivered to the country on Saturday night, Nov. 6, bringing the total jab supply to 110 million doses.
The shipment carrying 866,970 doses of government-procured shots arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 around 9 p.m. via Air Hong Kong flight LD456.
This brought the total supply to 110,646,500 doses but around 47 million doses are still in government warehouses as areas outside of the National Capital Region (NCR) still grapple with the increased demand in vaccination output.
“We’d like to thank the United States government for facilitating the delivery of these vaccines. This is part of the 1.7 doses of vaccine which arrived night,” said Assistant Sec. Wilben Mayor, head of National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19’s sub-task group on current operations.
The US-based Pfizer-BioNTech pharmaceutical company delivered a total of 1,733,940 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines.
The first shipment – comprised of 866,970 doses – arrived on Friday night while Saturday’s delivery of another 866,970 doses completed Pfizer’s 1.7-million dose commitment.
“We are thrilled to be delivering almost a million vaccines in this load. It’s exciting, it brings the amount that we have contributed to almost 30 million or facilitated,” said John Groch, counselor for public affairs at US Embassy.
“I think it’s in an ongoing way as a sign of friendship and cooperation between the people of the United States and the people of the Philippines. We look forward to coming here next time and doing this again,” he added.
As of Nov. 6, a total of 34,402,150 individuals have already received their first dose of COVId-19 vaccine while 29,331,626 others have been fully vaccinated according to data from the National Vaccination Operation Center (NVOC).
The fully vaccinated population represents 38.02 percent of the 77 million eligible population that the government targets to be fully vaccinated by the end of 2021 to achieve herd immunity.