(Eagle News) – Another 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine arrived from China on Thursday, April 22, as scheduled, bringing the total number of Sinovac doses delivered to the country at 3 million.

Total vaccine doses now reached 3.525 million including the 525,600 AstraZeneca doses from the COVAX Facility.

The Philippine government said that the additional SInovac doses would be used to vaccinate those in the A1 to the A4 priority list. The A1 group includes health frontliners, the A2 refers to the elderly, the A3 to the group of those with comorbidities, while the A4 refer to the economic frontliners as well as members of the media, education, religious sector.

Another 500,000 doses of Sinovac doses are due to arrive on April 29.

The Philippines is also expecting the arrival of 500,000 doses of Sputnik V vaccines from Russia before the month ends.

The last delivery from Sinovac also consisted of 500,000 doses. This was last April 11.  Sinovac was also the first vaccines against COVID-19 to be delivered in the country; this was on Feb. 28 when the first 600,000 doses donated by China arrived, delivered by a Chinese military cargo plane.  This was followed by 400,000 doses on March 24; 1 million doses on March 29 which was part of the government-procured vaccines; and the April 11 delivery of 500,000 doses.

At least 3 million more vaccine doses are set to be delivered next month, based on a previously announced schedule by vaccine czar Carlito Galvez,  This would include 2 million more Sinovac doses, and at least 1 million more Sputnik V doses from Russia’s Gamaleya Institute. He is also hoping that more deliveries from COVAX Facility of the World Health Organization (WHO) would come in, including doses from Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

The Philippine government bought a total of 25 million doses of Sinovac vaccines from China, according to a Palace press statement. It targets to achieve herd immunity by year end with the innoculation of 70 percent of the population.

(Eagle News Service)