MANILA, Philippines — Local regulators are meeting obstacles in the probe on the illegal vaccination of President Rodrigo Duterte's security with the smuggled Sinopharm, its director general said Wednesday.
Furor and calls from the public and lawmakers for accountability had met the president's revelation in late 2020 that the Presidential Security Group had been inoculated as early as September of that year despite no vaccine for the COVID-19 approved yet at home.
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Duterte had essentially exonerated the PSG on top of attempts by administration officials to justify and move on from it, but the Food and Drug Administration has said that it would continue its probe to hold someone responsible.
But on CNN Philippines' "The Source," FDA chief Eric Domingo described the investigation's progress as having met a blank wall with no response from the PSG.
"The secretary of health sent a letter to the PSG asking for a list of whoever was vaccinated, if they were and what the vaccine was so that they can be monitored and checked for adverse events, but I don't think there's been any reply," he said.
Domingo said incidents such as the Sinopharm inoculation mess would be more dangerous once actual vaccinations in the country begin.
"[When] you have vaccines that are coming in legally, that's also the time when the illegal jabs could be slipped inside," he said in mixed English and Filipino. "So I want all possible ports of entry checked and [we're] working with agencies...to make sure that the only vaccines coming in are those that are authorized."
The said concern that the chief regulator aired is among those that experts in December warned could haunt the administration's vaccination efforts.
Dr. Benjamin Co, an infectious diseases expert, had said that failing to identify whoever was responsible for the entry of the Sinopharm could set a bad precedent for the country toward drug distributors and manufacturers in the long run.
He said too that using unregulated vaccines, with no assurance that it was kept in proper storage, could give PSG personnel a false belief that they are already safe, hence putting their families and especially the president in danger.
Adding to those opposed on the move was Vice President Leni Robredo, who said officials' justifying it on supposedly "good intentions" could send the message that smuggling the jabs could be tolerated depending on the need.
The customs bureau in the days that followed since the illegal vaccination said it would look if some items that crossed the country's borders were misdeclared, including if the vaccines could have been flown by the military, but no update has been given more than a month later.