The Food and Drug Administration is still facing a blank wall in its probe on the inoculation of members of the Presidential Security Group with unregistered COVID-19 vaccines more than four months after it happened.
“Until now, the case is pending. No one is answering our queries, even the Department of Health has been asking but we cannot get any information,” FDA director-general Eric Domingo said in a radio interview.
Domingo was asked about the case after President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday got his first shot of China’s Sinopharm vaccine, the same brand as the one given to the PSG.
In December last year, Duterte disclosed that members of the PSG were inoculated with Sinopharm, which has yet to be issued Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.
It was only in February this year that the FDA granted compassionate use permit for 10,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine for the use of PSG members.
The same compassionate permit was used for Duterte’s inoculation, Domingo said.
A compassionate use permit, however, only allows for legal administration of COVID-19 vaccine and is not tantamount to the FDA endorsing the product’s safety and efficacy.