The second shipment of 400,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine donated by China arrived Wednesday morning.
A Philippine Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft carried the CoronaVac doses from Beijing.
“This is considered a milestone flight for PAL as it marks the flag carrier’s first airlift of COVID-19 vaccines to Manila from an international hub and makes PAL the first local carrier to fetch and carry home much-needed vaccines for our country,” PAL spokesperson Cielo Villaluna said.
On Monday (March 29) PAL will again send an all-cargo flight to bring the first batch of one million CoronaVac jabs bought from Sinovac.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said inn addition to the one million doses of CoronaVac donated by the Chinese government (600,000 in February and 400,000 yesterday), the government procured another one million doses from Sinovac.
Meanwhile, more than half a million vaccine jabs have been administered in the country, the Department of Health said.
Of the 1,125,600 available doses (600,000 from Sinovac and 525,600 from AstraZeneca), more than 98 percent have been distributed to vaccination sites.
Metro Manila has received the largest bulk of doses, with 279,870, followed by Central Visayas, with 110,760.
Metro Manila, however, has only used close to 60 percent of its 1st dose allocations
The second dose for the Sinovac vaccine should be administered after four weeks, while AstraZeneca should be between one to three months later.