Sixty-nine percent, or 269,000, of the over 390,000 donated bivalent Covid-19 vaccines have already been administered, and more supplies are expected to arrive this year, Department of Health Undersecretary Eric Tayag said on Tuesday, Aug. 15.
This number is based on the department's Aug. 14 data.
He also advised that not all healthcare workers in medical facilities will receive the vaccine yet as the supply is still limited and is being divided among every facility in the country.
The official also clarified that bivalent vaccines can now be inoculated as a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd booster to healthcare workers, senior citizens, and immunocompromised people only and not to the general population.
The expected 2 million doses of bivalent vaccines from the COVAX Facility will also be given to the same population.
Meanwhile, the EG.5 omicron subvariant remains a "variant of interest" and there is no sufficient data as yet on whether it can cause severe infection.
The total number of recorded infections from the new subvariant remains at 12, Tayag added.
The EG.5, a sublineage of XBB.1.9.2, is present in over 50 countries as of Aug. 8 and was added to the list of variants under monitoring by the World Health Organization on July 19.
Latest number of cases
In an advisory, the department said 924 new cases were recorded from Aug. 7 to 13 with an average daily case rate of 132.
This is five percent lower compared to the previous week's tally.
Out of the new cases, 11 are in severe and critical condition and 14 deaths were reported from July 31 to Aug. 13.