The Philippine government aimed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic this year, according to Galvez.
Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. on Friday said that the national government aimed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
In a report on Manila Bulletin, the national government was targeting to contain the coronavirus pandemic this year by imposing a multi-pronged strategy in order to build up the nation’s COVID-19 vaccine inventory and to accelerate the implementation of the vaccination program.
Galvez said in a statement on Good Friday that the year 2021 was intended for “containment strategy”.
The vaccine czar, who was also the chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) Against COVID-19, explained that they had to achieve a steady supply of COVID-19 vaccines and had to strategize their vaccination through the mobilization of national resources — including the national government, the local government units, and the private sector.
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Galvez also said that the Philippines was affected by a “severe” shortage of COVID-19 vaccines because of the scarcity in the global supply.
He added that countries that manufacture COVID-19 vaccines were restricting the import of raw materials and the vaccines itself since they had also been speeding up the inoculation of their own population.
The National Task Force Against COVID-19 had been negotiating with international COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers in order to increase the country’s supply of COVID-19 vaccines.
Currently, the Philippines had a total supply of 2,525,600 COVID-19 vaccine doses.
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This month, the national government was expecting the arrival of 2.6 million doses from Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute, China’s Sinovac Biotech, and the WHO-led COVAX facility.
Over 600,000 individuals were already vaccinated against COVID-19 since the national government launched the free vaccination program last March 1, 2021. According to Galvez, there were 2,497 vaccination sites established across 771 cities and municipalities.
The national government, according to Galvez, intended to raise the number of vaccinations from 500,000 to one million per week.
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