MANILA - Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said the Philippine government has administered nearly 2 million COVID-19 vaccines as of Wednesday.

In the weekly briefing with President Rodrigo Duterte, Duque said almost 2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses out of the 3,525,600 vaccine doses it already received.

The Philippines was supposed to receive 15,000 Sputnik V COVID-19 shots from Russia on Wednesday, but it was postponed after the vaccines were not loaded on a Qatar Air commercial flight that was scheduled to arrive in the Philippines by 11 p.m. Wednesday.

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Duque also said the country is starting to see improvements in its epidemic curve, with the daily tally of cases starting to decrease.

"Kung titingnan ang ating epidemic curve, makikita na nagsisimula na tayong makakita ng pagbaba sa ating mga kaso," he said.

(If we look at our epidemic curve, we can see that we are starting to see a decrease in our cases.)

The average daily attack rate for every 100,000 population in the National Capital Region (NCR) has also decreased from 9.13 three to four weeks ago, to 8.84 at present.

He, likewise, explained that the hospital utilization rate in NCR has improved to 69 percent, which is now considered at the "moderate" level.

According to Duque, the Department of Health has achieved the following in its COVID-19 response:

• 635 additional health facilities
• 23,241 additional COVID-19 beds
• 500,000 procured rapid antigen kits
• 61 percent health care hospitalization rate
• 14,668 human resources for health
• P7 billion obligated for health care workers
• 107 million PPE sets distributed

As of Tuesday, COVID-19 has so far sickened 1,020,495 people in the Philippines. The tally includes 17,031 deaths, 935,695 recoveries, and 67,769 active cases.

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