MANILA— The Philippines on Friday welcomed 1,877,600 doses of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, as the country battles a fresh wave of new infections driven by the omicron variant.

The AstraZeneca shots, bought by the private sector, arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1 via China Airlines flight CI701 shortly before 10 a.m.

• Task force: PH fully vaccinates 54 million individuals vs COVID-19, 70pct of target population

This raises the country's total vaccine deliveries to 215.5 million, over 136 million doses of which have already been distributed nationwide, data gathered by the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group showed.

Some 56.8 million individuals are already fully vaccinated in the country, while 59.6 million have received their partial dose against the respiratory disease.

Nearly 6 million people, on the other hand, received their booster shots.

The country this week launched COVID-19 booster vaccination in select drugstores in Metro Manila, a bid to ramp up efforts to reach herd immunity.

• Philippines begins COVID-19 booster vaccination in Metro Manila drugstores

The government for now has allowed only booster shots to be administered in pharmacies to healthcare workers, their family members, essential workers, and the indigent population, health authorities said.

On Thursday, the health ministry confirmed over 31,000 new COVID-19 cases, pushing active infections to more than 275,000.

ABS-CBN researchers said the number of those still battling the disease is the 5th highest number of active cases since the start of the pandemic.

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