An official of the Department of Health (DOH) on Wednesday admitted that the Philippines is still well short of its vaccination target of inoculating 70 percent of the country’s population against Covid-19 this year.
“When you look at our numbers, we are not yet there. But the good thing is we are speeding up. We will expand our vaccination with our mega vaccination sites,” Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire.
She cited that one of these identified sites is the Nayong Pilipino in Paranaque City.
As of April 13, 2021, there were 2,988 vaccination sites conducting Covid-19 vaccination in across all regions.
With the arrival of the additional 500,000 additional doses last Sunday, the DOH said that the total available doses in the country are now over 3 million doses, off which 93 percent have been distributed to different regions. This means a total of 2,801,020 doses have been distributed throughout the country.
“In one week, we were able to successfully distribute almost 900,000 doses to all our regions—this is a testament to our logistics handling and cold chain capabilities and shows that we are ready to distribute vaccines quickly once the bulk of the vaccine doses from our negotiations and Covax arrive,” Vergeire said.
She added that from the distributed doses, 1,093,651 Filipinos, comprised of healthcare workers, senior citizens, and persons with comorbidities, have been afforded partial protection through administration of the first dose.
Meanwhile, of the total Filipinos who received their first doses, 162,065 Filipinos have been given their 2nd doses of the vaccine, thereby affording them the full protection and benefits that vaccines provide, she noted.
“With the sustained high number of cases in the country, the government has strengthened its collaboration with the private sector to boost the vaccine deployment program through the expedited rollout of vaccines to economic frontliners under the A4 priority group,” The DOH said in a statement.
This partnership, the DOH added, will allow the government to protect more Filipinos much quicker and will allow for a larger-scale rollout of vaccines upon arrival of the procured and donated vaccines come midyear.