AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines are set to arrive in the Philippines on Thursday, March 4, a government official said Wednesday as the country rolled out its mass immunization program.
President Rodrigo Duterte is set to receive the shipment of 487,200 vaccines courtesy of the COVAX global facility, which ensures equitable access to the sought-after jabs, Sen. Bong Go said.
The shipment, which was supposed to arrive on Monday, follows the arrival of 600,000 doses of China's Sinovac vaccines which are being used for the inoculation of health workers and troops.
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The shipment arriving Thursday are different from the 17 million AstraZeneca doses ordered by the national government and the country's top tycoons.
The vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, is the second to secure emergency use authorization in the Philippines after Pfizer and BioNTech.
COVID-19 vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez Jr. had said that the government aims to finish inoculating all of the country's health workers this March so that it could start immunizing the general Filipino public by late April or early May.
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