MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has fully vaccinated ten million Filipinos as of Thursday morning, a day before Metro Manila goes into a two-week lockdown, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said.
Hailing this as a “very important milestone,” Roque said in Filipino: “Today, we have ten million Filipinos with full protection against COVID-19.”
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This comes a day before Metro Manila reverts to a two-week enhanced community quarantine period from August 6 to 20, amid the threat of the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Roque assured that vaccination will continue during the ECQ period.
The presidential spokesperson said the national government is allocating four million additional jabs to Metro Manila during the two-week lockdown period.
Citing information from Health Secretary Francisco Duque, Roque said that they are looking into achieving full vaccination of 50% of Metro Manila population by the end of ECQ.
On Wednesday, vaccine czar said 12,058,315, or 11.06% of the population, have received the first of two doses required by most vaccines available in the country to be protected against COVID-19.
The government targets to vaccinate 50 million to 60 million of the population to achieve “population protection” by year-end, a new target which essentially revised downward the original goal of delivering jabs to 70 million people to achieve herd immunity.
For August, Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said they aim to administer three million doses per week, equivalent to 12 million jabs this month. — Kristine Joy Patag with reports from Xave Gregorio