'Special treatment': Senator questions FDA approval of Sinopharm jabs for PSG
MANILA, Philipines — There should be no fast lane to inoculation against COVID-19 for the Presidential Security Group, Sen. Risa Hontiveros said Friday, pointing out that even frontline healthcare workers have not been vaccinated yet.
Hontiveros said this in response to the compassionate use license for 10,000 doses of Sinopharm's jabs granted to President Rodrigo Duterte's security detail by the Food and Drug Administration. The approval came more than a month after the chief executive first revealed the unauthorized vaccination effort with smuggled Sinopharm vaccines.
The senator added that there is "no point" in granting the PSG such a permit when the FDA has already approved Pfizer and AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccines for emergency use.
"There should be no fast lane for PSG, especially when there is no special treatment for our health care workers who sacrificed the most in this pandemic," she said in a mix of Filipino and English.
Why all the secrecy surrounding PSG's vaccination program?
"It is still dubious that PSG has a separate vaccination program, outside of what the NTF has laid out for the public," Hontiveros also said in Filipino, adding that "questions still fill the minds of many."
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, who was the first to announce on Thursday the granting of the license to the PSG, said he still does not know where the Sinopharm jabs came from. He previously said that the vaccines were not bought, implying a donation.
When asked, he acknowledged that the 10,000 doses may include the family members of the PSG as well.
For Hontiveros, the government's lack of transparency is only raising more questions.
The first of these concerns, she said, is the unclear data on Sinopharm's safety and efficacy. While the Chinese state-run company's jab has been used to inoculate millions in China, Phase 3 trial data on the vaccine has not yet been published in any peer-reviewed magazine.
Also dubious to Hontiveros is the timing of the special permit granted to the PSG. If vaccines from Sinovac and Pfizer are arriving in the next few weeks as the government has promised, she questioned, why not just wait?
Finally, she questioned if, and how much, taxpayer money was used to acquire the Sinopharm jabs.
"It is not difficult to answer the people's questions if the reasoning used is truthful," Hontiveros said in Filipino.
"The public deserves answers."
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