THE Philippines has administered nearly seven million doses of vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) deputy chief implementer Vivencio Dizon said.

Government data show that the country has given 6,948,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines as of Monday morning.

In a Palace briefing, Dizon said weekly vaccine administration has reached one million doses for three consecutive weeks.

“We are seeing that the vaccination is getting faster,” he said.

Of the total administered vaccines, over 2.4 million shots were given to healthcare workers, over 2.2 million doses to senior citizens, 2.15 million jabs for individuals with comorbidity, and nearly 160,000 doses for the economic front-liners, which started the vaccination last week.

Dizon said the country administered more COVID-19 vaccines with average daily vaccination of 150,000 last week, with a peak of 220,000 vaccine administration in a day from an average of 30,000 per day.

He attributed this to the increasing number of vaccines arriving in the country.

“Since more vaccines arrived last week, we are confident that our vaccination will increase in the coming days and weeks. And when it comes to vaccines for June and July, we are seeing our numbers continue to increase,” he added.

Dizon said the government targets to inoculate 500,000 doses a day once vaccine supply stabilizes this month.

As of Monday, total COVID-19 vaccines that arrived in the Philippines reached 12,605,870 doses.

Dizon said the majority of these are donations from COVAX facility and bilateral partners like China, and the rest were vaccines purchased by the government from Sinovac and Gamaleya of Russia.

Vaccine orders of the government from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Novovax, and Johnson & Johnson are expected to arrive in the second half of the year, he added.

Vaccine purchase transparency

Dizon said the NTF, Department of Health, and the Department of Budget and Management will be presenting to the Senate on Tuesday how the national government released and utilized the budget for vaccination.

The government has allotted PHP82.5 billion this year to buy COVID-19 vaccines.

“We support these calls for transparency, and we will be very transparent,” he added. PNA