De Lima seeks probe on PSG immunization using unregistered COVID-19 vaccine

Senator Leila De Lima has filed a resolution seeking a Senate inquiry on the "early" inoculation of some government officials using "unregistered and smuggled" COVID-19 vaccines.

This, despite President Rodrigo Duterte's earlier order to the Presidential Security Group (PSG) to keep silent on the issue.

"The officials so inoculated must reveal all the information that they have on the unregistered vaccines if only to protect our country against forces seeking to influence the highest office in our land to the detriment of our people," De Lima said in Senate Resolution 603.

"Withholding of information on this matter during any investigation serves only to protect criminals who smuggled and are probably still smuggling these illegal vaccines into our country," she added.

The Senate Committee of the Whole is scheduled to hold a hearing on the government's COVID-19 immunization plan on Monday.

However, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said the PSG would not be invited as he stressed that the inquiry would focus on how the P72.5 billion allocation for vaccines will be used.

Duterte previously said some members of the military were already injected with a COVID-19 vaccine made by Chinese firm Sinopharm without an approval from the Philippines' Food and Drug Administration.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines confirmed that soldiers who are part of the PSG were the first ones who got vaccinated against COVID-19, "owing to the nature of their mission and function."

Some Cabinet members also received it, according to Interior Secretary Eduardo Año.

But a group claiming to be the sole distributor of Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine in the Philippines has denied involvement in the covert inoculation.

"It must be ascertained who smuggled the vaccine and who distributed them to the said public officials and how they were able to do so outside government regulations," De Lima said. -MDM, GMA News