By Ella Dionisio

National Task Force against COVID-19 and vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr, on Monday said the country is expecting to receive more than 900,000 doses of AstraZeneca from WHO-COVAX Facility by March 22.

“We are given an order by the COVAX (Facility) of WHO (World Health Organization that 979,200 AstraZeneca vaccines will arrive this coming March 22,” Galvez said to President Rodrigo Duterte during their meeting.

“If ever there is a delay, it will (arrive) by the first week of April,” he added.

Galvez said the country is also expecting 1.4 million doses from Sinovac where 400,000 were donated again by the Chinese government.

“Based on the target timeline needed, this coming March we will be receiving 2.3 million vaccines,” he said.

Duterte hoped that all vaccines they are expecting will arrive so the government can start vaccinating the general public.

To prevent AstraZeneca vaccines from spoiling, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said they will be using all donated vaccines for the health workers.

Duque said the interval between the first and second shot of AstraZeneca is 12 weeks or three months.

He said they set aside doses for the second jab of AstraZeneca but to solve the short shelf life of the vaccine they decided to use all the 525,000 vaccines.

“What we think is and according to WHO (World Health Organization) country representative, he will write a letter to reassure that the next batch will come and we will use it for the second dose,” he said.

“Why, it is better to use all (vaccines) for the first dose is so that we can cover all health workers and frontliners. And we resolve the problem in AstraZeneca’s short shelf life which means after three months that vaccines will expire,” he said.

Galvez expressed support on the decision of DOH to use all the available AstraZeneca vaccines. DMS