Less than a week before the anticipated arrival of 117,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines, government agencies practice the steps once the shipment arrives at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and how it will be brought and stored at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa City.
The first batch of coronavirus vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech will be distributed to several hospitals across Metro Manila as well as certain healthcare facilities in Cebu and Davao, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Tuesday.
Mock COVID-19 vaccines bilang bahagi ng simulation ng vaccine cluster, nakarating na sa Research Institute for Tropical Medicine sa Muntinlupa. | via Naomi Tiburcio/PTV
MUNTINLUPA CITY, Feb. 9 The Philippine Government, through a coordinated network of stakeholders composed of National Government Agencies and private sector partners, today conducted a full-scale simulation exercise of vaccine deployment to showcase the country’s readiness for COVID-19 vaccine deployment. The simulation exercise demonstrated the general function and responsibilities of the national and regional vaccine operations centers and stakeholders, and aimed to identify potential challenges in the vaccine delivery, handling, transport, and cold chain management, in anticipation of the expected arrival of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines from COVAX Facility by mid of February.
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The review of cases per region may be recalibrated every month by NITAG, along with other indicators such as the number of active cases in recent four weeks and the proportion of those who became ill after an exposure per 100,000 population in recent four weeks.
What are the available vaccines?
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. earlier said that the country is targeting to secure this year up to 148 million doses, enough to vaccinate 70 million Filipinos.
Talks are ongoing with seven pharmaceutical companies, but Galvez said that as of January, the country was already in “advanced stages of negotiations with American pharmaceutical companies Novavax, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson, Chinese drugmaker Sinovac, and Russian medical research institute Gamaleya. The other firms are AstraZeneca and Moderna.