MANILA, Philippines — Some 207,090 more procured doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the Philippines over the weekend with inoculation efforts for minors underway.
An Air Hong Kong plane carrying the additional jabs landed at the NAIA Terminal 3 in Pasay on the evening of October 16.
The shipment brought the number of doses the country got in total last week to 2.29 million, according to the National Task Force against COVID-19.
Per Philstar.com's monitoring, the Philippines has received 23.32 million doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine overall.
Broken down, some 12.66 million doses were donations from the COVAX Facility that is co-led by the World Health Organization.
Procured doses by government, meanwhile, amounted to 10.68 million doses.
Dr. Ted Herbosa, a special advisor to the pandemic task force, said the new Pfizer doses will be allocated for adolescents aged 12 to 17 with comorbidities.
The government last week began its pilot rollout of inoculation on the said age group, seven months since vaccinations in the country began.
There were 1,151 minors who received their vaccine on the first day, according to the Department of Health.
Official data as of October 16 showed there are now 24.23 million Filipinos fully vaccinated for COVID-19.
The figure is out of the more than 70 million the government is targeting to complete their shots this year.
Some 27.92 million have received a first dose, with the country administering 52.15 million doses in total. — Christian Deiparine