Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said Thursday he does not see any bottlenecks in the distribution and rollout of China’s donated Sinovac-made CoronaVac vaccines to the different parts of the country.
In a virtual presser, Nograles announced that a total of 189,000 doses out of the 600,000 doses of CoronaVac have been delivered to various regions.
Some 12,000 doses have been transported to Davao City while 7,200 have been delivered to Cebu City.
To date, more than 8,500 individuals, mostly frontline healthcare workers, have been inoculated with CoronaVac.
Nograles said there are no reported delays in the delivery of Sinovac-made vaccines and that President Rodrigo Duterte is “very happy” with the CoronaVac vaccine rollout.
“Wala namang delay (There’s no delay). That’s just a report of where we are now. In fact, today, tomorrow, the day after, tuluy-tuloy pa rin yung pagro-rollout natin at pagde-deliver (the rollout and delivery of vaccines are continuous). So in terms of bottlenecks, wala naman kaming nakikitang (we do not see any) bottlenecks,” he said.
According to Nograles, the national government has also instructed hospitals to immediately start administering Covid-19 vaccine doses sans fanfare.
“In fact ang (the) instruction nga po (is) as soon as it is delivered to already begin the inoculation and vaccination process. Do not wait anymore for us. ‘Yung pagpupunta lang namin sa mga hospital, nagkakaroon tayo ng mga seremonyas ay those are just ceremonial kumbaga vaccinations (Us going to the hospitals are just ceremonial vaccinations),” he said.
The national government, he said, is no stranger to the delivery of vaccines to prevent other diseases such as polio and measles in far-flung areas.
“We are very very prepared down to the regions. It’s not something new to us. ‘Yung (the) vaccination and immunization program has long been conducted by the different LGUs,” he said.
Last month, authorities conducted several simulation exercises for the arrival of Covid-19 vaccines.
The simulation exercise involved loading the vaccines to refrigerated vans and transport them to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine cold storage facility. (PNA)
