President Duterte chose state-owned and Chinese-made Sinopharm over other coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines because of the recommendation of his doctors, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said on Tuesday, May 4.

“Unfortunately, I was not privy doon sa mga (to the) conversation ng presidente sa kanyang mga (of the president with his) doctor but I understand ang (the) choice ni presidente (of the President) was guided also by his doctors,” he said in his virtual press briefing.

The Chief Executive particularly chose a vaccine with an inactivated virus as the platform because this has been used for at least 140 years, Roque added.

Inactivated vaccines use the killed version of the germ or virus that causes the disease. Examples of inactivated vaccines are the ones used against polio, whooping cough, rabies, and hepatitis A.

Like another China-made vaccine, Sinovac, Duterte has to receive a second dose of the Sinopharm vaccine after a month.

Roque said the President, who received the vaccine administered by Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Monday night, did not experience adverse effects after the inoculation.

Duterte even met with members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on COVID-19 Response after the vaccination.

Quoting the Vaccine Expert Panel (VEP) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. argued that Sinopharm was as safe as Sinovac.

“Sinopharm is being widely used by other countries. Actually, iyong (the) Sinovac is number five ‘yan sa (in) world usage at (and) Sinopharm ay halos sumusunod po sa Sinovac (is almost next to Sinovac),” he said.

Sinovac, which the country now uses to inoculate senior citizens and persons with comorbidities, has a 50.65 percent to 83.5 percent efficacy rate in real-world situations while Sinopharm, developed by Beijing Biological Products Institute, a unit of Sinopharm subsidiary China National Biotec Group (CNBG), is said to be 79.34 percent effective.

Galvez said that Chinese and Middle Eastern leaders use the Sinopharm vaccine. It is also pricier than the Sinovac doses.

Sinopharm has not been given an emergency use authorization (EUA) by the country’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the officials argued that the President’s use of it falls under the compassionate special permit issued by the agency for the Sinopharm’s use on the Presidential Security Group (PSG) in February.

The two Chinese-made vaccines have seen strong demand from many developing and underdeveloped countries that have limited access to the more effective doses made by U.S pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.