MANILA – Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the arrival of Pfizer-made coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines from the COVAX facility of the World Health Organization will be slightly delayed.
“Medyo ma-delay. Mag-slide tayo ng another week,” Galvez said at the Senate hearing on Thursday. “The promise of the WHO before is in the second week. But there are documents that needed to be submitted before its arrival.”
“Considering the agreement medyo made-delay ng third week of February. Pero definitely it will be in February,” added Galvez, who also serves as the chief implementer of the National Task Force against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Vivencio Dizon, deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, assured that the hold-up in the processing of some documents is being fixed so that vaccines from the COVAX facility will arrive.
“Nagkaroon ng kaunting delay dahil sa processing ng mga dokumento with the COVAX facility and the World Health Organization. Pero we were assured na tinatapos na ito,” Dizon said.
The country is set to get around 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX Facility in the first quarter, including 117,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine.
All the 117,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine will be given to medical workers as they are the first recipients of the country’s vaccination drive which is set to start on Feb. 15.
COVAX facility will provide COVID-19 vaccines to 20% of the country’s population but only 15% will be free. Vaccines for the remaining 5% will be shouldered by the government.
The government is eyeing to vaccinate 70 million Filipinos against COVID-19 this year as it is assured of the 148 million doses of vaccines from seven companies like Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac, Astrazeneca, Novovax, Johnson and Johnson, Gamaleya, and Bharat BioTech./PN
