Thread by @cnnphilippines

JUST IN: 896,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines donated by the Japanese government arrive at Terminal 1 of NAIA | @PiaGarciaHere

COVID-19 live blog: bit.ly/3mnHKBW

@PiaGarciaHere Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines Kazuhiko Koshikawa: I hope our vaccination donation helps reach the milestone of herd immunity

@PiaGarciaHere Amb. Koshikawa: Japan firmly stands by and will continue to cooperate for the Philippines to prevail over this pandemic. We are confident that a better Christmas for Filipinos is now well within reach.

@PiaGarciaHere Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr.: The Filipino people and President Rodrigo Duterte and I thank the Japanese government for your donation of an additional 1.9 million doses which comprises 3 million doses that will save the lives of more or less 1.5 million Filipinos

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez says the arrival of the vaccines comes at a crucial time as the government expands the vaccination program to include minors

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez: More importantly, these donated vaccines will enable the Philippines to realize its goal of achieving a daily jab rate of 1.5 million doses

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez: We are happy that Japan and the other countries who donated vaccines will be part of our very important milestone. We never knew that we will reach this day wherein we will be receiving 100 million vaccines that have been procured and donated by other countries.

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez said the milestone was important because it means being able to vaccinate 50 million Filipinos

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez says there are still challenges in delivering vaccines to some areas as they vaccines are sensitive and require specific storage conditions

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez says they are conducting a "wall-to-wall" inventory of vaccines that are close to expiring: Sa ngayon ang nakikita namin ay Moderna and also some AstraZeneca na second dose. But we are looking into this and the WHO is monitoring this.

@PiaGarciaHere Sec. Galvez on the Bloomberg ranking: Ang nakikita natin...we have more than 204 countries around the world, yung ang question natin bakit hindi kasama yung other countries, they have only selected 53. (1/3)

RELATED: bit.ly/3BmkRmS

Sec. Galvez: Second, I believe yung dapat tinitignan...at least 3 months or 6 months duration ng epidemic curve. (2/3)

Sec. Galvez: Kung makikita sa ngayon, if they will concentrate on the cases that we have ngayon lang tayo nakaka-recover and we expect they will punish us in terms of the evaluations of the different criteria that they use. (3/3)

Sec. Galvez: We had an evaluation of the Nikkei Asia and the Bloomberg...I believe yung kanila is more on the economic terms. We believe the COVID-19 response should be measured totally.

Sec. Galvez says calling the Philippines the worst place to be during the pandemic is a "biased comment"

The country receives 896,000 more doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, pushing the country closer to the 100 million mark in vaccine deliveries. bit.ly/3vTDM7B