PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte will attend the ceremony for the arrival of Sinovac vaccines this Sunday, Malacanang said on Friday.
Its in his [schedule], Presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said in a text message to reporters on Friday when asked for confirmation.
The Department of Health (DoH) and the National Task Force (NTF) against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) refused to confirm whether or not the vaccines will arrive on February 28.
In a recently released joint statement, the DoH and NTF said the vaccines will arrive within the next couple of days.
The same statement said, however, that the arrival ceremony for the vaccines will be held at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay City.
Details of the planned arrival ceremony are still currently being finalized in close coordination with the Embassy of the Peoples Republic of China, DoH and NTF said.
Roque said the nationwide inoculation will start a day after the arrival of the vaccines, on Monday, March 1.
The DoH and NTF, however, disputed this saying the vaccine rollout will be on hold pending the recommendations of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group on the allocation and rollout of the Sinovac vaccines and the subsequent approval of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases on the recommendations.
Roque had said that of the 600,000 doses of donated Sinovac vaccines, 500,000 will be allocated for medical frontliners while the remaining 100,000 will be for soldiers.