The 400,000 Sinovac vaccine doses that arrived on Wednesday, March 24, will be reserved for Metro Manila, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Bulacan, Cebu City and Davao City, announced Malacañang on Friday, March 26.

This was the decision of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG), in a bid to reduce the continued spike in COVID-19 cases in these areas, said Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque.

Over the last few days, government officials and health experts advising the government have partly attributed the steep increase in cases to the presence of more transmissible variants.

The 400,000 CoronaVac doses will still go to health workers in these areas, said Roque. This is because all the vaccines already in the Philippines, over 1.5 million doses, are still not enough to cover the country’s 1.7 million health care workers and medical frontliners. – Rappler.com