The Calabarzon region will receive some 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses starting next month until the last quarter of the year after a governor appealed for more supply amid the spike in cases.
“The government is really planning to deploy most of the vaccines to provinces near Metro Manila, the ‘Plus’ areas, and areas with a surge in cases,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said, adding that the National Capital Region is already close to vaccinating 50 percent of its target population.
Calabarzon, Roque said, will get 3.8 million vaccine doses in September and another 17.4 million doses in the fourth quarter of the year, which Roque said was the “biggest allocation” out of all the regions outside NCR.
Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla earlier said his province needs at least 6 million vaccine doses to inoculate 70 percent of its residents, but it has only received about 1 million.
Pfizer shipment
The Philippines received on Wednesday night the latest batch of government-procured Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines consisting of 362,700 doses, bringing to 4.95 million the total doses of the Pfizer brand the country received since June.
From the shipment, Cebu and Davao received 50,310 doses each while the remaining 262,080 doses were brought to Pharmaserv Express’ cold-chain facility in Marikina City before being deployed to Metro Manila.
As of August 25, a total of 48.8 million COVID-19 vaccines have arrived in the country.
Japan halts use of 1.6m Moderna doses
Japan will halt the use of 1.63 million doses of Moderna’s vaccine after reports of contamination in several vials, drugmaker Takeda and the health ministry said.
Takeda, which is in charge of sales and distribution of the Moderna shot in Japan, said it had “received reports from several vaccination centres that foreign substances have been found inside unopened vials.”
“Upon consultation with the health ministry, we have decided to suspend the use of the vaccine” from three batches from Thursday, it added.
In a statement, Moderna said the reported contaminations involved “one product lot distributed in Japan.” with AFP