The Philippine government will continue inoculation of the Moderna vaccine despite Japan's suspension of its vaccines for alleged contamination.

In ''Laging Handa'' public briefing on Saturday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the suspension of 1.63 million doses of Moderna vaccine in Japan will not affect the Philippines' procurement.

Vergeire said Japan only suspended a certain batch of contaminated Moderna vaccine and not the entire vaccine that were delivered to them.

"It is not the entire Moderna vaccine. It is just a batch. It's like a separate number of vaccines that they found contamination, and this might be because of the transport or maybe in the manufacturing site but it doesn't mean that the whole manufacturing is affected," she said.

"So here in the Philippines, we inspect every batch of vaccine before we use it, and we haven't seen such contamination to the Moderna vaccines that were already delivered to us. So we are not going to stop the implementation of our Moderna inoculation," she added. Robina Asido/DMS