AFP ready to deploy more Covid-19 vaccines

From the Philippine News Agency (Mar 28, 2021): AFP ready to deploy more Covid-19 vaccines (By Priam Nepomuceno)

Photo courtesy of PAF

With additional 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine set to arrive on Monday, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has expressed its readiness to help in the deployment of the vaccines even in far flung areas of the country.

"We will support in areas where we can, depending on our own operational deployments. We will also be providing sea, air, and land mobility/transportation assets for use in the deployment of PNP (Philippine National Police) personnel and vaccinators, as well as in the transportation of vaccines," AFP spokesperson Marine Maj. Gen. Edgard Arevalo said in a statement on Sunday.

He said the AFP medical personnel also continue to provide key assistance in vaccine deployment.

"We continue to help provide medical health front-liners in the vaccine deployment. Specifically, these are vaccinators that include nurses and trained medical aid men to augment the teams from LGUs (local government units) and DOH (Department of Health)," he added.

Arevalo said the AFP and the police under the supervision of the LGUs, will continue to man the checkpoints.

The AFP reported that a total of 31,519 personnel have been inoculated with Covid-19 vaccines as of March 25.

The figure includes 30,530 personnel who were vaccinated with Sinovac jabs and 989 personnel who were inoculated with AstraZeneca vaccines.

The AFP has also delivered 60,300 Sinovac vials and 1,520 doses of AstraZeneca jabs to 47 military treatment facilities.

President Rodrigo Duterte is scheduled to witness on Monday the arrival of around 1 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine purchased by the Philippine government from Chinese drugmaker Sinovac Biotech.

On Feb. 28, Duterte welcomed the arrival of 600,000 doses of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine donated by Chinese government. China donated additional 400,000 on March 24.

Around 100,000 of the first batch of 600,000 doses of CoronaVac vaccine were donated by Chinese military to the AFP.

Apart from Sinovac vaccines, the Philippines has so far received 525,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines through the Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility for the country’s health front-liners.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1135136