That story about some cabinet men and members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) having themselves inoculated against COVID-19, using vaccines donated by China, has refused to die down, as various officials have come up with unexpected details about the case.
We have noted that there are at least two points that must be looked into. First is the use of vaccines not yet approved by our own Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- a violaion of law. Second is the use of the donated vaccine by a select group to protect themselves – despite official government policy that the country’s health workers, along weith the poor and vulnerable, should be the first to get vaccinated.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, chairman of the National Task Force (NTF) on COVID-19, has now said the vaccines in question had actually been smuggled into the country – another violation of law.
When it was pointed out that the health workers who vaccinated the PSG men could be charged with administering a vaccine without FDA approval, the PSG chief said the men actually vaccinated themselves.
With so many details coming out from various sources in the government – some reports contradicting other reports -- with no one apparently on top of the whole situation, the Senate said it will convene as a Committee of the Whole to look into the entire government vaccination program.
This should include the very first question that came up months ago – Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s charge that Health Secretary Francisco Duque III “dropped the ball” when he failed to take action on Pfizer’s original offer as early as July to supply the Philippines with 10 million doses of its vaccine. Secretary Duque later said it was only in September that his department, not the Department of Science and Technology, was authorized to deal with Pfizer.
Mass vaccinations have now begun in countries which were able to acquire the approved vaccines early, including the United Kingdom in Europe, the United States in the Western Hemisphere, and India in Asia. The earliest the Philippines will have Pfizer vaccines is in May, five months from today.
Though all this time, we will have to rely on our own resources – mostly our own people protecting themselves with face masks and face shields and with physical distancing.