Amid the rapid increase of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in the country in the past days, the national government has stepped up its vaccination efforts of around 1.7 million medical frontliners in order to proceed to the next phases of the vaccination plan.

The next phases, according to Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., vacccine czar and chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, is to cover as many Filipinos amid what experts described as rapid increase in COVID-19 infection that was never seen before in the past months.

Galvez said the vaccination of medical frontliners "must be carried out in a deliberate manner" to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed in case many of them experience adverse effects.

"The initial vaccine roll-out is still limited to our medical frontliners and health care workers and not yet for the general public. The inoculation of medical workers must be carried out in a deliberate manner. Considering the crucial task they perform, their vaccination must be done in batches in light of possible adverse effects and the impact on the manning requirements of health facilities," he said on Sunday, March 14.

"When all our medical frontliners and health care workers are inoculated and our country already has sufficient vaccine supplies, we shall significantly pick up the pace of our vaccination program," he noted.

On Saturday, the Department of Health (DOH) recorded 5,000 new cases in the country, a record-high for 2021 and the highest tally since August 2020 when the cases last breached the 5,000-mark.

The DOH also announced that the positivity rate, or the percentage of people who tests positive compared to the total number of those tested, has already reached 12.8 percent.

According to Galvez, around 90 percent of the 1,125,600 available vaccine doses have already been deployed in various hospitals around the country since the national vaccination program kicked off last March 1.

However, the current limited supply of vaccines in the world market has limited the capability of the government to conduct a full-scale vaccination program which would ideally include the next in line of priority such as senior citizens, persons with co-morbidities, frontline personnel in other essential sectors, and indigenous population among others.

"The current production capacity of vaccine manufacturers simply has not been able to keep up with global demand. Moreover, most of the anti-COVID vaccines produced have already been pre-ordered already by rich countries," he admitted.

Around 19 million vaccine doses are expected to arrive in the second quarter of the year, the same period when the vaccination of all medical frontliners are set to be finished and the inoculation of other priority sectors will begin.

Meanwhile, around 60 million doses are set to be delivered in the third quarter and another 60 million vials will arrive in the fourth quarter.

"The Duterte administration is confident that it is on track in implementing its immunization program and optimistic that it would be able to achieve its target of inoculating about 70 percent of the country's population within this year," Galvez maintained.