Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday that local government officials will be punished for falling behind their targets for COVID-19 vaccinations as the country seeks to open up the economy.
The Philippines, which has one of Asia's worst coronavirus epidemics, has so far fully immunised a little over a third of 77 million people eligible for shots.
Duterte said there was no reason why daily vaccinations could not be ramped up to at least a million from an average of 500,000 since the country has sufficient stock of vaccines.
"We saw fault lines in the overall picture of our vaccination programme. I am not contented," Duterte said in a recorded address aired on Wednesday.
Duterte said local officials "who are not performing nor using the doses given to them in a most expeditious manner" would be sanctioned and made accountable. He did not spell out the penalties.
The government has been gradually easing COVID-19 curbs, and on Wednesday, it announced it was lifting the nightly curfew imposed in the capital region from Thursday.
Duterte asked the police and military to use planes and helicopters to deliver the vaccines faster to the provinces.
At least 24 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
Russian air attacks on Ukraine kept the eastern half of the country under air raid alert for more than five hours, Ukraine's military said early on Sunday, with Moscow launching several waves of strikes targeting Kyiv and other cities.
Massive consecutive strikes hit Beirut's southern suburbs from late Saturday into Sunday, sending booms across the city and sparking flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometres away.
Over 80 police personnel have been injured in clashes with supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan taking part in a march near Islamabad, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said on Saturday.
Ukraine will present its "victory plan" at a regular meeting of its allies at Ramstein in Germany on October 12, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram on Saturday.