THE National Task Force Against Covid-19 (NTF) on Thursday, June 17, 2021, said the Philippines received only 2,276,820 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) a week ago.
The number is 2,340 doses short of the 2,279,160 that Unicef Philippines and Gavi, Vaccine Alliance, two of the organizations that lead the Covax Facility, reported earlier.
Margaretha Francis, communication officer of Unicef Philippines, confirmed to SunStar Philippines via email that 2,279,160 doses of the Pfizer vaccine were delivered to the Philippines on June 10.
Together with the 193,050 doses of the same vaccine that were delivered on May 10, the Philippines should have received a total of 2,472,210 doses.
The Gavi website also states that the Philippines has received 2,472,210 doses of Pfizer aside from the 2.556 million doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine.
Covax has allocated a total of 7,056,210 doses for the Philippines, consisting of 4.584 million doses of AstraZeneca and 2,472,210 doses of Pfizer.
The Philippines is expected to receive an additional donation of 2.028 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine from Covax.
As of June 17, the Philippines was supposed to have taken delivery of 14,208,210 doses, including 9.0 million doses from Sinovac, 180,000 doses of Sputnik V and the vaccines from Covax.
The NTF, however, said the Philippines has received only 14,205,870 because the actual volume of Pfizer vaccine that arrived reached only 2,469,870 doses - 193,050 on May 10 and 2,276,820 on June 10.
A personnel of NTF said in the Viber group for the media that the Department of Health (DOH) has sent a vaccine arrival report to the Unicef regarding the discrepancy.
Unicef, which is the largest single vaccine buyer in the world, procures and delivers the vaccines for Covax, while Gavi coordinates the operation and fund-raising activities for Covax.
The Philippines is among 92 low and middle-income economies that are eligible to receive vaccine donations or subsidized allocations through the Covax advance market commitment mechanism. The first delivery from Covax was made on March 4, 2021. (Marites Villamor-Ilano / Third Anne Peralta-Malonzo)