MANILA, Philippines — The Duterte administration on Wednesday received 3,530,400 new doses of Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine as part of its procured supply.
Flagship carrier Philippine Airlines carrying the additional jabs landed at the NAIA Terminal 2 in Parañaque early morning of November 17.
Sinovac comprises majority of the country's stockpile of vaccines for the efforts that began in March.
This latest shipment brought the number of Sinovac doses in the Philippines to 54.03 million, per a Philstar.com monitoring.
Of that, 51.13 million were procured by the national government, two million were donated by Beijing, while 500,000 were purchased by local goverrnments and 400,000 by the private sector.
The arrival of new Sinovac doses came as the country begins administering booster shots to health workers.
The Chinese-developed jab is among the Food and Drug Administration cleared for emergency use for booster doses.
Other vaccine brands cleared for booster are Pfizer and Moderna.
Eight months into inoculation efforts, there are now 32.21 million Filipinos fully vaccinated for COVID-19 according to official data.
That figure is out of the targeted 77.13 million by the government this year to meet population protection.
Some 39.46 million have received an initial shot, with 71.68 million vaccine doses administered in total. — Christian Deiparine