MANILA, Philippines — The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday expressed concern over the revelation made by the commander of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) that personnel of the unit injected the COVID-19 vaccine themselves.
“As FDA Director-General, my first concern is the safety and the efficacy of these vaccines. I begin to wonder where they came from,” FDA Director-General Eric Domingo said in an interview over ANC’s “Headstart.”
“Definitely somebody definitely did something wrong. With the FDA law, it says it is illegal to import, distribute, manufacture, use unregistered drugs,” he later added.
PSG commander Brig. Gen. Jesus Durante previously revealed that the vaccine was administered among a number of President Rodrigo Duterte’s security detail without the help of a medical professional, adding that they only relied on a manual for the doses of the vaccine.
Durante also revealed that the PSG men received the vaccine as early as September, without the permission of Duterte.
Domingo, meanwhile, warned about the dangers of inoculating oneself with the vaccine without the help of a medical professional.
“Everything could go wrong. Even the DOH (Department of Health) now, before they will start inoculating, eh trained na lahat ng medical personnel natin, magwa-one round of retraining ‘yan for each particular vaccine.”
(The medical personnel is trained, yet they will have to go through one round of retraining for each vaccine.)
“Of course you can handle the vaccine, you handle it properly, [but] you can cause infection if you’re not clean. If you don’t know where to inject it, you could hit a nerve, you could hit a blood vessel. You could injure a person,” he cautioned.
And will the FDA press charges against the PSG? Domingo, however, did not give a categorical answer.
“Our regulatory enforcers are very good at doing investigations and I am happy that even Secretary [Menardo] Guevarra of DOJ (Department of Justice) has said they are going to send the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) to investigate.”
“Now our enforcement unit is going to work with the NBI and the Bureau of Customs so that we can find and trace where the lapses were and where the breach is in our regulatory process,” Domingo added.