MANILA, Philippines — The United States has sent 918,450 more donated doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines that was coursed through the COVAX Facility.
An Emirates plane carrying the additional supply of the jabs landed at the NAIA Terminal 3 in Pasay on the afternoon of October 10.
The National Task Force against COVID-19 said the latest shipment is part of the 1.8 million doses Washington has pledged to Manila.
Another 924,300 doses are seen to arrive on Monday, it added.
This brought the country's total supply of Pfizer vaccine to 18.92 million doses, according to Philstar.com's monitoring.
Most of that came from the global initiative COVAX or at 10.81 million doses, while 8.10 million were procured by the national government.
The US donation came as the Philippines is set to begin vaccinating minors for COVID-19 this week.
“We’re really proud to be part of this effort here in the Philippines to vaccinate the Filipino people including teenagers and children so we can get them back to school,” said US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Heather Variava.
Health authorities have also opened inoculations for the general public, seven months since the efforts began.
Official data as of October 10 showed there are now 23.18 million Filipinos fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
The figure is out of the 70 million the government is targeting this year to meet "population protection."
Some 26.48 million have since received an initial dose, with 49.67 million doses administered overall.