Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. asked Vice President Leni Robredo to see the bigger picture in the national inoculation program against COVID-19 before criticizing the government for its supposed "slow" pandemic response.

Galvez, also the chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, said this in response to Robredo's comment that the inoculation program has been "slow."

"Dapat maunawaan niyo po, ma-factor in niyo po 'yong mga challenges po natin (You should understand and factor in the challenges that we are facing)," said Galvez during the arrival of fresh supplies of Sinovac-CoronaVac vaccines on Sunday night, September 19.

"Mahirap po iyon, very impossible na pagdating ng bakuna ay maiturok natin kaagad (That's hard, it's very impossible that we can readily rollout the vaccine once they arrive)," he added.

Prior to this, Robredo said that the country has now more than 60 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines so at least 30 million Filipinos should have been fully vaccinated by now.

"It is slow," she said in her weekly radio show.

But Galvez explained that the formula for the vaccination program is not as easy as what Robredo thought it was.

"Sa comment ni VP na medyo nababagalan siya, na dapat 30 million na 'yong ano, Madame President, hindi po ganoon ang pagcompute ng ating pagbabakuna. Hindi po natin kinokompyut na kung 60 million ang delivery ay idi-divide natin kaagad ng two (As for the comment of the VP that she thinks slow, that we should have 30 million now, Madame President, that's not how we compute the vaccination program. We do not just immediately divide tbe 60 million delivery by two," said the vaccine czar.

As of Sunday, the vaccine supply in the country reached 64,380,400 doses.

Among the latest deliveries include three million doses of government-procured Sinovac jabs and 2,020,590 doses of donated Pfizer shots from the COVAX facility on Sunday night.

Of the total supply, there were 41,414,015 doses that have been administered nationwide. There were 22,853,606 individuals who received their first dose while 18,560,409 others have been fully vaccinated.

Galvez said that Robredo should consider the timing of the deployment of the vaccine depending on the prescribed interval that the second dose should be administered, or the shots will be wasted or spoiled if not stored properly.

Every vaccine has a different interval for the first and second dose, ranging from three to four weeks or up to several months.

"Mayroon po tayong protocol na tinatawag for second dosing (We have protocols for the second dosing)," Galvez said.

He added that many healthcare workers who are also vaccinators went back to the hospital to care for the sick as cases surge due to the Delta variant.

Further, he noted that the focus of local government officials were divided to address the other needs of their constitutents such as the distribution of cash assistance in areas placed under lockdown.

Nonetheless, the vaccine czar remained optimistic that the numbers will improve with the delivery of more vaccines.

"I'm very hopeful na tataas ito kasi ang Metro Manila, for second dosing na siya at tumataas na ang level ng deliveries natin (I'm very hopeful that will increase because Metro Manila is already for second dosing and our deliveries are scaling up)," Galvez said.

In fact, around 9 p.m. Monday, a total of 561,600 doses of Pfizer will arrive at Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). The vaccines were donated by the United States government via the COVAX facility.