MANILA — The Philippine government announced Tuesday that it had vaccinated 215,997 Filipinos against COVID-19.

This after two weeks of vaccine rollout for health workers.

Data released to the public also showed that as of March 15, 6 p.m., 96% of the 1,125,600 COVID-19 doses from Sinovac and AstraZeneca have been distributed.

The DOH said it had already reached the “northernmost and southernmost island provinces of the country.”

There are a total of 929 vaccination sites in 17 regions.

According to the data released, an average of 23,466 individuals have been vaccinated in the last 7 days.

“NTF (National Task Force) and DOH assure that vaccination pace will soar once bulk of vaccines come in for the next priority groups,” the government said in its release.

The government has been criticized for not being able to vaccinate more people given the continued increase in COVID-19 cases in the country.

The region that received the most number of doses so far is the National Capital Region with 278,870 people vaccinated.

This is followed by Region 7 with 110,760. Both NCR and Region 7 have been seeing an increase in cases in the past several weeks.

Other regions that received a large number of doses are Region 4A with 91,200 and Region 3 with 82,900.

Current deployment of vaccines is limited to frontline health workers who were given the option to choose between Sinovac’s CoronaVac or AStraZeneca vaccines.

“The vaccination of HCWs (health care workers) is being done in batches to ensure adequate staffing in health facilities, in light of possible adverse events,” the post added.

The Philippines now has more than 620,000 COVID-19 cases with more than 50,000 of that active cases. The government aims to inoculate up to 70 million Filipinos to reach herd immunity by the end of the year.