The Philippines reported 402 coronavirus infections on Sunday, bringing the total to 2.84 million.

The Ministry of Health (DoH) said in an announcement that after another 184 patients died, the death toll reached 50,280, while the number of recovered people increased by 509 to 2.78 million.

There were 11255 active cases, of which 876 were asymptomatic, 4334 were mild, 3683 were moderate, 1961 were severe, and 401 were critical.

According to the agency, 3% of the 184 deaths occurred in December, 19% occurred in November, 40% occurred in October, 29% occurred in September, 5% occurred in August, and 2% occurred in July. Month, 1% occurred in June and February.

It added that six duplicate records have been removed from the statistics, six of which have been reclassified as collections, and 178 collections have been reclassified as dead.

The Ministry of Health stated that 164 patients tested negative and were deleted from the statistics, of which 159 recovered. Four laboratories did not operate on December 10, and three laboratories failed to submit data.

The agency stated that 23% of intensive care units in the Philippines are occupied, compared with 26% in Metro Manila.

Under the threat of the Omicron variant, the Philippines hopes to vaccinate more Filipinos against the coronavirus.

The health department said last month that due to a clear global shortage, the country is struggling to obtain syringes for injecting mRNA vaccines, such as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna.

Over the weekend, Minister of Foreign Affairs Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr. stated that after the government "failed again", the country had missed the opportunity to obtain 50 million syringes.

Mr. Locsin said on Twitter on Saturday night that Washington had discussed the need for syringes, but the Philippine agency refused to discuss the matter. He did not elaborate.

A few hours later, he said on Twitter that the health department offered to buy syringes at a price of 4.7 cents each. He described this as an illusion, because no one made "such cheap Pfizer low-dead volume syringes."

"If you know what we are paying for the vaccine, you will know that we are not completely poor," Mr. Losin said in response to a comment from a Twitter user. If this is a donation, the Philippines should accept it. trade.

On Sunday, the Ministry of Health and the country’s pandemic task force stated that the government is ensuring a sufficient supply of syringes, especially 0.3 ml syringes or micro syringes compatible with Pfizer vaccine, and 0.5 ml auto-disabled syringes for all other vaccines. .

These agencies said in a joint statement that "two batches of purchases were made through UNICEF."

They said that the first batch, including 8 million 0.3 ml syringes, valued at 29.1 million pesos, was fully delivered in October.

They added that the second batch was funded by the Asian Development Bank and included 44 million syringes worth 152.6 million pesos. "Due to global supply shortages, the 4 million units in the second batch will be delivered in December 2021, and the remaining 40 million units will be delivered in the first quarter of 2022."

These agencies said that 3.65 million of the 4 million syringes have been delivered, and the rest are expected to be delivered this week.

The health department stated that it also purchased 100 million 0.5 ml AD syringes in April at a price of P2.38 each, "the initial approved budget was P2.50 each."

“Therefore, P2.38 or 4.8 cents per piece is used as the basis for the ongoing emergency procurement of another batch of 50 million 0.5 ml AD syringes,” it said.

Charade Mercado-Grande, Deputy Minister of Health, said: “We assure the public that the Ministry of Health has been ensuring sufficient stock of syringes and that the process of obtaining these syringes complies with RA 9184 or the government procurement law.”

At the same time, the pandemic task force stated in the same press release that “the Philippine government has not rejected any Moderna vaccine.”

The pandemic task force stated that in accordance with a global equal access initiative, the Philippines received approximately 3 million Moderna vaccines from the United States in August. "The vaccine cluster has not received other Moderna vaccine offers. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza