PH to receive at least .8M COVID-19 vaccines from US
CNN Philippines — The Philippines is set to receive up to one million COVID-19 vaccine doses from United States after the Biden administration pledged an additional donation to help boost its fight against the pandemic, an envoy said on Tuesday.
Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez said the country could get Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccines from their surplus.
“Doon sa 80 million na yun, we’re going to get something like close to 800(000) to 1 million na doses, either Moderna or AstraZeneca, from their stockpile which is expected to be given to us by next month,” he said in a media briefing.
The White House in a statement said around 14 million doses will be allocated to dozens of friends and allies including the Philippines, while 16 million shots will be split in Asia through the COVAX global vaccine-sharing initiative.
Those are included in the 55 million remaining shots out of the 80 million doses that US President Joe Biden pledged to allocate by the end of June “in service of ending the pandemic globally.”
The Philippine government continues to cite low vaccine supply as one of the reasons for the slow rollout of its COVID-19 vaccination program.
Around 2.15 million Filipinos have so far completed their COVID-19 vaccination — only 3 percent of the national government’s plan to vaccinate at least 70 million individuals by December.
