The third batch of 50,000 doses of Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine from Moscow landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) aboard a Qatar Airlines at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday.
The Bureau of Customs immediately cleared the shipment before consigning to the Department of Health (DOH).
Earlier, the first and second batches of Sputnik V vaccines, consisting of 15,000 doses per batch arrived separately on May 1 and May 12, respectively, for a total of 80,000 doses.
Russia-based Gamaleya Institute developed the Sputnik V vaccine. Last March, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its stamp of approval to Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use.
National Task Force against Covid-19 Chief Implementer and vaccine czar, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. and Russian Ambassador to the Philippines Marat Pavlo welcomed the arrival of the vaccine at Naia.
Galvez said the vaccines would be distributed in “centers of gravity” or areas in the country that are experiencing surges in Covid-19 cases.
Sputnik V is administered in two doses. This is the only Covid-19 vaccine that was peer reviewed by the medical journal, The Lancet, which found Sputnik V vaccine is 97.6 percent effective against Covid-19.
It is one of the four vaccines being used in the government’s inoculation drive, along with those developed by Sinovac Biotech, AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech.
Galvez earlier said the Philippines secured a total of 10 million vaccines from Gamaleya Research Institute with a contract expandable to 20 million doses.
He said the country has so far administered 5.1 million doses, while some 1.18 Filipinos have completed their vaccination.
Other vaccines that were cleared through the One-Stop Shop of the Customs bureau included 5.5 million doses of Sinovac, 2.556 million doses of AstraZeneca, and 193,050 doses of Pfizer.