More than 70 million Filipinos to be fully vaccinated — Galvez

MANILA, Philippines — The Duterte administration expects more than 70 million people to have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by the time it steps down this month.

During a meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte and some officials last Monday, vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. reported that as of June 6, about 69.49 million persons have been fully inoculated against COVID-19 or equivalent to 72.20% of the target population.

The figure covers individuals who received two pandemic shots and the Janssen single dose vaccine. Individuals with at least one dose totaled 74.17 million or 82.41% of the target population of about 90 million.

"For our best case scenario, before the end of our administration, our most honest-to-goodness assessment is for individuals with at least one dose, we will have 75 million; and then for the fully vaccinated, it's 70,087,920," Galvez said in Filipino.

The expected number of fully vaccinated persons by June 30 is equivalent to about 77.87a% of the target population of 90,005,357. However, Galvez said the figure is higher than the original vaccination target of 70 million, which was raised to 90 million because of the spread of the more transmissible COVID-19 variants. Achieving the 70 million fully vaccinated persons would be a big contribution to the next administration, he added.

Galvez said the four-week first dose average was 321,083 doses per week while that of the second dose is just 242,606. A total of 151 million vaccine doses have been administered.

As of June 6, about 14.35 million persons have availed of booster shots.

Fully vaccinated persons aged five to eleven years old totaled 2.9 million, still far from the target population of more than 14 million. About 9.4 million individuals aged 12 to 17 years old have been fully inoculated against COVID-19, which is equivalent to 82% of the 11.47 million target. population. Some 6.75 million senior citizens or persons aged 60 years old and above have been fully jabbed, about 77% of the target population of 8.72 million.

President Duterte commended Galvez for overseeing the vaccination campaign and lauded Filipinos for following health and safety protocols. He also thanked China for providing the Philippines its first COVID-19 vaccine doses.

"We would like to reiterate again our gratitude to China because when we did not have vaccines, the two of us talked... We were just waiting for the next thing to happen. And one day without us really expecting it, China announced that they're shipping to the Philippines vaccines to start...our wall against the COVID-19," Duterte said.

"I can't believe we are about to end. We are about to end our story of our governance during my time. It seems that we have ended our big problem about the COVID-19 while other countries were grappling still, they were the ones who had the vaccines first," Duterte said.

Duterte, however, reiterated the need to continue the wearing of face masks and the observing of health protocols, noting that new COVID-19 variants are still developing.