Fifteen thousand doses of Sputnik V Component II vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were transported to the country from Russia late Tuesday night, Aug. 31.
Qatar Airways flight QR 928 fetched the shipment from Moscow to Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Pasay City at 10:47 p.m.
In an advisory, National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19 chief implementer and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the government-procured vaccines will be administered as second doses.
The delivery came amid mounting concerns on the "slow" delivery of the Russian-made jabs due to logistical issues which worried some individuals who received their first dose of the said brand.
For the month of August, only 30,000 doses of Sputnik V jabs were delivered to the country.
The government bought a total of 10 million doses of Sputnik V from Russia but only 380,000 doses were delivered so far. The rest of the supplies are expected to arrive in the remaining four months of 2021.
The Department of Health (DOH) had said that in the absence of Sputnik V, vaccine recipients can be injected with AstraZeneca as their second dose since both brands are using an adenovirus vaccine vector.
The latest delivery, which came hours after the arrival of three million Sinovac jabs, brought the total number of vaccines in the country to 51,900,590.