The Department of Health (DOH) said the government has enough supply of syringes for the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 despite a global shortage.

In a Palace briefing on Tuesday, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the DOH decided to use an alternative syringe for Pfizer vaccine.

"First of all we want to inform our people that there is no issue about the syringe. We have enough supply of syringes that we need for COVID-19 vaccination," said Vergiere.

"Although the ideal syringe that is used for these Pfizer vaccines would be the .3 ml, because of the global shortage across the globe, we now use an alternative which are the tuberculin syringes," she said.

"We have provided funds for different regions to buy these alternative syringes," she added.

Vergeire added that the Philippines have also received supplies of syringes from UNICEF.

"We also have already received our supplies from UNICEF, about 3.6 million worth of .3 ml syringes where distributed in different regions," she said.

"We also have enough supplies for our needs for now. So with these syringes, these are the .3 ml syringes, we also have delivery of around 40 million for the first part of the next year. So we are forecasting that next year, we will have enough supplies of these .3 ml syringes," she added. Robina Asido/DMS