Covid-19: Philippines launches campaign to vaccinate 9 million people in three days

The Philippines launched on Monday an ambitious drive to vaccinate nine million people against Covid-19 over three days, deploying security forces and using tens of thousands of volunteers to help administer the programme.

The immunisation campaign was scaled back from an earlier target of 15 million shots, but would still be a record in a country where vaccine hesitancy remains an obstacle and there are logistical hurdles to reach people in the sprawling archipelago.

Three million vaccinations per day is nearly four times the average of 829,000 daily shots in November. An official said news of the Omicron variant made the campaign even more vital.

"It is better to be prepared for the effects of Omicron," Carlito Galvez, the country's vaccination chief, told CNN Philippines on Monday.

The spread of the Omicron variant, which the World Health Organization has described as a "variant of concern", has sparked global travel restrictions and rattled financial markets.

The government has said it would deploy 160,000 volunteers in 11,000 vaccination sites nationwide for the three-day campaign.