MANILA (UPDATE)— The Philippines on Friday received 844,800 AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine doses donated by the German government, authorities said.

The shots, donated through vaccine-sharing platform COVAX, arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 via Emirates Airlines Flight EK 332 past 4 p.m.

This raises the country's total vaccine deliveries to over 89.5 million doses, data collated by the ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group showed.

Alexander Schmidt, the deputy head mission of German Embassy, said his government plans to donate 100 million more COVID-19 shots to developing countries.

The day's donation will also go to the country's education sector, Schmidt said.

The German government is planning to donate another batch of nearly 800,000 vaccine doses to the Philippines "soon."

Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr. thanked the World Health Organization (WHO) and the German government and said the additional jabs came at the right time as the country expanded its vaccination drive to include minors.

• Philippines begins COVID-19 vaccination of children with health risks

A total of 1,040 teens with health risks earlier in the day got vaccinated against COVID-19, he said.

"We are now sending a bulk of the latest vaccine deliveries to areas outside of NCR (National Capital Region), to enable local government units in the provinces to further scale up their vaccination throughput," he said.

Galvez is also confident that the newly delivered vaccines will help inoculate some 50 million people in the country by the end of the year.

"Over 400,000 Filipinos will be benefited from these vaccines, and this means that more than 400,000 of our countrymen will be saved from severe COVID-19 complications," he added.

• PH's total COVID-19 cases breach 2.7 million after 7,625 more infections logged

On Friday night, the Philippines will receive over 862,000 more shots from Pfizer. The batch was bought by the government.

The Philippines has fully vaccinated some 23.54 million out of its target 77 million, while nearly 27 million have received their first dose as of Thursday, according to government data.

— reports from Job Manahan and Joyce Balancio, ABS-CBN News

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