940,680 procured Pfizer doses arrive in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines on Wednesday night received nearly a million doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, part of the country's purchased supply of the jabs. 

State-run PTV reported that an Air Hongkong plane carrying the 940,680 doses landed at the NAIA Terminal 3 in Pasay past 9 p.m. of September 22.

Per the National Task Force Against COVID-19, some 811,980 doses were delivered to a cold storage facility in Marikina. 

Some 128,700 of the newly arrived doses would, in turn, go to Cebu. 

The latest shipment brought the country's total supply of Pfizer doses at 10.12 million, per Philstar.com's monitoring. 

Of that figure, 6.18 million doses were procured by the government, while 3.93 million came as donations from the COVAX Facility. 

The government has signed a deal with the US manufacturer for an overall 40 million Pfizer doses.

COVAX, the global initiative co-led by the World Health Organization, meanwhile, has vowed to send in 10 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses to the Philippines in the coming weeks. 

The arrival of more jabs in recent days and weeks came as the country battles a resurgence of coronavirus cases that experts have suggested may be driven by the Delta variant. 

Daily infections have now been reported in five-digit numbers, with the highest since the pandemic hit seen on September 11 with 26,303 more Filipinos contracting the disease. 

As it stands, the country's total count of infections has stood at 2.41 million, along with 37,228 deaths.