(Eagle News) – Another 500,000 doses of Sinovac vaccines arrived in the Philippines on Thursday, April 29, as scheduled, bringing the total number of vaccine doses in the country to over 4 million.

Of this number, 3.5 million doses are Sinovac vaccines. The rest – 525,600 doses – are AstraZeneca doses that were delivered by the World Health Oganization’s COVAX Facility last March.

The 3.5 million Sinovac doses further boosted the Philippine vaccine roll-out amid the emergence of new highly infectious variants that are suspected to be driving most of the cases in the country.

Just this April, a total of 1.5 million Sinovac doses already arrived in the country, including this latest batch of 500,000 doses that arrived Thursday, April 29. The last two batches of 500,000 doses each arrived on April 11 and 22.

On March 29, 1 million doses of Sinovac also arrived in the country, which was part of the government’s procurement program.

The first 1 million Sinovac doses that arrived in the country – 600,000 doses on Feb. 28, and 400,000 doses on March 24 – were donated by the Chinese government.

The Philippine government bought a total of 25 million doses of Sinovac vaccines from China, according to an Palace press statement.

It hopes to acquire 148 million doses from various vaccine manufacturers this year for the immunization of around 70 percent of the country’s population, to achieve the so-called herd immunity.

(Eagle News Service)