Galvez said some 117,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines would be delivered by mid-February this year while some 5,500,800 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines are expected to arrive by mid to late February this year.

Arianne Reza, an associate deputy minister at Public Services and Procurement Canada, says Canada does have some existing supply of the special, low-dead-volume needles needed to extract six doses from vials of Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine.

Health officials have repeatedly said that they believe Pfizer will meet its March deadline to deliver four million vaccines to Canada. The company is set to confirm delivery for supplies in the next quarters of the year.

The GAVI alliance, the group that co-leads COVAX with World Health Organization, said last week it aimed to deliver 2.3 billion vaccines worldwide by the end of 2021, including 1.8 billion free doses to lower-income countries.

He said according to COVAX, the number of doses and the projected arrival of the vaccines are all indicative since it all depends on the global supply.

It was US medical professionals who first discovered in December that they could get six doses - as opposed to five - from each vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by using special syringes that trap less vaccine around the needle after an injection. The first delivery has also been scheduled for mid-February.

"We assure the Filipino people that your government will secure the targeted 148 million doses of safe, effective, and free vaccines to inoculate 70 million people by 2021 and realize our nation's goal of achieving herd immunity within this year", he added.

"We are already prepared for this initial deployment plan where we are going to utilize our private facilities of our private partners so that we'll be able to manage these kinds of vaccines", Health Spokesperson Maria Rosario Vergeire said.

An EUA allows a vaccine that is still under development to be administered in the country for the duration of a public health emergency.

Meanwhile, National Task Force Against COVID-19 Chief Implementer and Vaccine czar Secretary Carlito Galvez, Jr said that "this positive news is a testament that under the COVAX facility, it ensures equitable distributions of vaccines throughout the globe, which bodes well with the Duterte's administration principle of "Walang maiiwan, walang iwanan" (No one will be left behind)".

A woman wearing a face mask walks on the street in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa.