Amb. Romualdez says he may be partly to blame for botched Pfizer deal

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said Sunday that perhaps he is partly to blame for the botched deal with US drugmaker Pfizer on the procurement of 10 million vaccines for the coronavirus disease 2019.

In an interview with DZBB, Romualdez said he should have called Health Secretary Francisco Duque III to immediately sign the Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement (CDA) with the pharmaceutical firm.

“Sinasabi ko nga, maybe I can share the blame kung ano ang nangyari. Dapat nga tinawagan ko na mismo si Sec. Duque,” he said.

(I am saying, maybe I can share the blame on what happened. I should have called Sec. Duque directly.)

“Dapat sana tinawagan ko, pwede ko sabihin, ‘Secretary, kailangan na natin pirmahan muna ‘yan para at least pwede natin masabi,’” he added.

(I should have called him and said, “Secretary, we should sign the document immediately.”)

Earlier, Senator Panfilo Lacson revealed that the country could have secured the delivery of 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer as early as January next year if Duque had immediately worked on the CDA.

Lacson dropped the name of Duque following a tweet from Foreign Affairs Secretary Locsin, who said that he and Romualdez had arranged for the delivery of the vaccines with the help of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Duque, however, denied he did not act quick enough for the signing of the CDA. He explained that it was only on September 24 that the Department of Health (DOH) was informed that it would be the signatory for the document.

Romualdez, for his part, said Duque was right in saying that the signing of documents for the vaccines needs proper review.

“Tama rin si Sec. Duque, kailangan natin pag-aralan. Meron tayong process diyan. At the end of the day pwedeng sabihin nating may kasalanan, pero wala tayong magagawa. Ang nangyari ay talagang hindi natin alam gaano kabilis ang lakad ng process dito,” he added.

(Sec. Duque was right, we really had to study it. We have a process for that. At the end of the day, we can say someone is at fault but we could not do anything. What happened was we did not know how fast the process was.)

EDV