Philippines gets 753,480 new Pfizer doses

MANILA, Philippines — More doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine procured by the government arrived in the Philippines on Wednesday night. 

An Air Hongkong plane carrying the 753,480 additional doses arrived at the NAIA Terminal 3 in Pasay sometime at 9 p.m. of September 15.

Of that total figure, the National Task Force Against COVID-19 said Cebu and Davao would get 51,480 doses each. The two are the areas in the country with capacity to store the Pfizer jabs, apart from Metro Manila. 

This new delivery brought the Philippines' total supply of the said vaccine to over 6.60 million doses, per Philstar.com's monitoring. 

Some 3.93 million of that were procured by the national government under a deal for 40 million doses in total that was signed in June.

COVAX Facility, meanwhile, has sent 2.66 million Pfizer doses to date.

Early this week, the World Health Organization announced the global initiative it co-leads would provide the country 10 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to come in the next weeks.

Government figures on September 14 showed there are now 17.34 million Filipinos fully vaccinated for COVID-19. 

That is out of its target of inoculating up to 70 million this year to meet "population protection."

Some 22.18 million individuals have since received their initial shot.