The government is negotiating with four manufacturers to acquire between 90 and 100 million doses of the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) vaccine next year.

National Task Force (NTF) Against Covid-19 chief, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., also announced during an inoculation event at a mall in Clark, Pampanga that the purchase of six million doses of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson, to be added to the January 2022 allocation, will be finalized this week.

Last week, the NTF got confirmation of the delivery this month of 18.3 million doses of Pfizer, Moderna, and Sinovac vaccines while the United States committed to send another 5.3 million doses of Pfizer through the US-COVAX sharing agreement.

So far, the Philippines has already received 77,410,640 doses since February, with 46,380,460 doses utilized since the rollout began on March 1.

Of the total delivered vaccines, 48.7 million doses were procured by the national government, 19.6 million doses were donated through the COVAX Facility, 5.3 million were purchased by local government units (LGUs) and private sector, and 3.6 million doses were donated by other countries.

“Sa pagpasok po ng fourth quarter, inaaasahan natin ang pagdating ng malalaking delivery mula sa iba’t-ibang manufacturer (In the fourth quarter, we are expecting larger vaccine deliveries from different manufacturers),” Galvez said during a media briefing.

“Based on our latest negotiations with the vaccine manufacturers, we are confident that at least we will be receiving 100 million vaccines by end of October,” he added. (PNA)