9% of Filipinos now fully vaccinated against COVID-19

MANILA, Philippines — Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. reported to the House health committee on Wednesday that 9,825,466, or 9.01% of the population, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 since the government began rolling out the jabs in March.

Galvez also said that 12,058,315, or 11.06% of the population, have received the first of two doses required by most vaccines available in the country to be protected against COVID-19.

The government targets to vaccinate 50 million to 60 million of the population to achieve “population protection” by year-end, a new target which essentially revised downward the original goal of delivering jabs to 70 million people to achieve herd immunity.

The region with the highest vaccine coverage remains to be Metro Manila, where 3,651,886 of its residents have been fully vaccinated, while 4,776,520 have received their first dose, according to Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje.

The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, meanwhile, remains to be the region with the lowest vaccine coverage, with only 83,687 fully-vaccinated residents and 88,716 partially-vaccinated residents, according to data presented by Cabotaje.

Cabotaje reported that the government administered 673,652 vaccine doses on Tuesday, the highest number of jabs given in a single day since the start of the vaccination drive on March 1.

She said that the government aims to sustain the average number of daily jabs between 600,000 to 700,000 vaccine doses, as long as supply permits.

She added that the government breached its July target of administering 300,000 to 400,000 jabs per day as it gave out an average of 532,018 vaccine doses per day that month.

The target of fully vaccinating seven million people was also surpassed, with Cabotaje reporting that 9.1 million have been fully vaccinated that month.

The government, however, fell slightly short of its target of administering a total of 10 million doses in July, having only given 9,776,346 jabs, and its goal of fully vaccinating health care workers by at least 90%, having only fully vaccinated 84.3% of them that month.

Despite Metro Manila going into enhanced community quarantine from August 6 to 20, the government aims to ramp up vaccinations to protect more people against COVID-19, especially in light of the threat of the more infectious Delta variant.

Cabotaje said they aim to administer three million doses per week, equivalent to 12 million jabs this month.