More than 2.87 million doses of life-saving COVID-19 vaccine are scheduled to arrive this week, according to the Manila International Airport Authority.
First to arrive Monday evening was a shipment of 375,570 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Health officials made the supply agreement with the US drug maker last month for a total of 40 million Pfizer doses that require to be stored at negative 70 to negative 80 degrees Celsius temperature.
The firm was also tasked to distribute the vaccines to various parts of the country.
The country is also expected to receive a total of 2.5 million doses of Sinovac vaccine from China – 1.5 million on Thursday and one million on Friday.
Health secretary Francisco Duque III said the arrival of the additional vaccines will allow more Filipinos to get inoculated against COVID-19.
The Philippines has so far administered more than 17 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the Department of Health said on Monday.
A total of 11,113,107 have received their first doses while 6,089,314 have already gotten the complete protection of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Manila ranked number one among the local government units in the National Capital Region in terms of vaccine rollout, accounting for 30 percent of the total doses administered in the region as of July 25.
“Come hell or high water, we will vaccinate,” said Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso.
