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President Rodrigo Duterte has defended Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd from accusations that he ruined the government’s agreement with a US pharmaceutical company to supply the Philippines with a vaccine against the 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
Palace spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said Thursday that the president does not see any major lapses from Duque in the negotiations with Pfizer.
Senator Panfilo Lacson on Wednesday accused Duque of messing up negotiations in a follow-up to a tweet from Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. that 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine could have been delivered to the country in January if not “someone dropped the ball. “
Lacson said Locsin was referring to Duke.
Roque said the president advised Duque during Wednesday’s meeting of the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to respond to Locsin’s allegations.
He doubted Pfizer’s guarantee to supply the country with the doses by January, as other countries closed their own deals with the company earlier.
“The important thing is that the talks will continue and it looks like we can actually get Pfizer anytime between the second and third quarters of next year (the important thing is that the negotiations continue and we can get the Pfizer vaccines anytime between the second and the third quarter of next year), ”he said.
Roque said that the statements of Duque and Locsin about the agreement with Pfizer do not matter to the president since it was the vaccine czar Carlito Gálvez Jr. who is in charge of the acquisition of vaccines.
In an interview on the ABS-CBN news channel, Duque said during meetings with Pfizer that he did not know that an agreement between Locsin and the Philippine ambassador to the United States, José Manuel Romualdez, had reached an agreement with the Secretary of State. from the United States, Michael Pompeo, for the acquisition of 10 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer.
“I don’t remember there being such a definitive ‘you can get 10 million doses’ (there was a [agreement] that ‘you will get 10 million doses’). There was none of that, ”he said.
He believes that the 10 million figure that Locsin mentioned in his tweet was referring to the 10 million doses for the world market outside of what was being given to source countries like the United States.
Duque denied that he did not act fast enough on Pfizer’s confidential disclosure agreement (CDA).
“When you go through a process, you can’t rush things like that, you have to be prudent and cautious when talking about a novel vaccine … but the technology they are using, mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) has never been tested or proven”, said.
Another senator, Francis Pangilinan, said he hoped there would be no anomalous transactions in the government’s alleged failure to secure the delivery of 10 million doses of Covid-19 in January.
“I hope there is no ‘kickvacc’ problem in abandoning the purchase of the Pfizer vaccine,” Pangilinan said in a statement Thursday.
On Monday he presented a Senate resolution calling for the creation of the Senate Plenary Committee to investigate the Covid-19 vaccination program.
“Tens of millions of lives and livelihoods are at stake, and an economic activity worth trillions of pesos. Failure due to corruption or incompetence in launching the vaccine is not an option, ”said Pangilinan.
Sen. Leila de Lima, meanwhile, wants to empower Filipinos to choose the vaccine to be administered.
The detained senator also criticized Malacañang for belittling the goals of her bill that requires a free Covid-19 vaccine for all Filipinos.
“The statement by Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque calling my Covid-19 vaccine bill or the proposed Libreng Bakuna Kontra Covid-19 Law for sa Lahat ng Pilipino ‘redundant and superfluous’ reflects the attitude of this administration in our ongoing fight. against the pandemic, ”he said.
In the House of Representatives, members of the Makabayan bloc are also seeking an investigation into the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines.
Lawmakers cited an apparent preference for China’s Sinovac and Moderna vaccines despite being more expensive than the Pfizer drug.
Bayan Muna’s representative, Ferdinand Gaite, said at a press conference Thursday that the Sinovac and Moderna vaccines cost about P3,600 and P4,000, respectively, compared to Pfizer’s P2,300.
The deputy leader of the minority and representative of Bayan Muna, Carlos Isagani Zarate, questioned the preference for Sinovac despite the problems related to the vaccine.
Makabayan lawmakers also criticized the lack of funds available for vaccines despite the allocation of P72.5 billion in the General Appropriations Act of 2021.
With RED MENDOZA, Bernadette E. Tamayo and DIVINA NOVA JOY DELA CRUZ
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