The Philippines once again received more than two million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines through WHO’s COVAX facility on Saturday, May 8, 2021.

 

The vaccines arrived precisely at 1 pm in the Afternoon via Singapore Airlines Flight SQ910 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport terminal three. This is the second and the largest delivery received so far by the Philippines from the COVAX facility, with over two million doses after receiving the initial 526,000 doses last March.

 

As of May 2021, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and recently Sputnik V are the only vaccines that arrived in the Philippines, with a total number of 7.54 million doses of the vaccines on its stockpile.

 

According to Health Secretary Fransisco Duque, this is the largest batch of vaccines received from COVAX. It is expected that more vaccines are scheduled to arrive within the coming weeks, with an upcoming 193,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines from COVAX and more batches of Sinovac and Sputnik V set to arrive within this month. 

 

The Philippines earlier temporarily halted the use of AstraZeneca vaccines for individuals ages 60 below after the European Medicines Agency recently announced that there is a possibility of a rare blood clot linked to the vaccines, which some countries in Europe halted.