Fuss over Pfizer

The Philippine bureaucracy is one confused maze. The only constant is the buck-passing every time something goes wrong. And whenever something goes awry, someone has to take the blame, or be held responsible.

Dubbed as civil servants, many of them would rather procrastinate instead of trying to do first some trouble-shooting so as to address the feared consequence or outcome. This is the “teka, teka” (wait-wait) mentality of bureaucrats who get the state of affairs of the government into paralysis of analysis.

We cannot totally blame them though for this kind of culture that has become ingrained among the bureaucrats. They are bound by laws, not to mention civil service rules and state accounting and audit procedures that must be complied with.

But we are under a public health emergency crisis due to a highly infectious and deadly pandemic.

This seems to be the core of all the arguments being tossed around by our government officials scrambling to secure a supply for the Philippines of vaccines against the dreaded coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19. Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Philippine ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez griped over the supposed loss of opportunity to get the early delivery of anti-COVID vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNtech from the United States (US).

In his @teddyboylocsin Twitter post, the DFA Secretary deplored early efforts that he and Romualdez, worked on to get Pfizer to supply at least 10 million doses of its anti-COVID vaccine by January, 2021 went to naught after someone “DROPPED THE BALL.” Locsin revealed he secured this Pfizer commitment in July this year through the help of US State Department Secretary Mike Pompeo. Locsin’s Twitter rants gained traction as neighboring countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia reportedly are set to receive this month their initial delivery of Pfizer vaccines.

Senators who have been hot on the collar against Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III quickly joined Locsin’s rants to pin the latter down as the culprit. This is because Duque is the immediate head of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) that will give the go-signal whether or not to allow the use of vaccines here in our country. Other than the DOH, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) panel of experts also weighs in on the review of the vaccine before it gets to the FDA.

But as DOH Secretary, Duque also co-chairs the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID). This is the policy-making body that recommends to President Rodrigo Duterte on community quarantine measures to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in our country.

In defense of himself, Duque admitted it took him a while before he signed the confidentiality disclosure agreement (CDA) because he wanted to know more about the Pfizer anti-COVID vaccine. Duque justified opting to “err on the side of caution” given the previous experience on the anti-dengue vaccine “dengvaxia” controversy where DOH is being sued in various courts.

Duque recalled he received the revised CDA from the Office of Executive Secretary (OES) Salvador Medialdea on Sept. 14. Duque was told by Medialdea on Sept. 24 that the DOH chief is the one to sign the CDA. But it was only on Oct. 20 when Duque finally signed it after previous reviews done by OES and DOST legal and vaccine experts, respectively.

In obvious rebuttal, Locsin replied in his Twitter post without naming names again: “My sweet suggestion is for them to move on; catch up; make up for mistakes; and do your job. No one’s asking to admit fault because no (one) gives a flying f—k about you…”

Designated as the “vaccine czar” and chief implementor of the country’s COVID-19 response, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. broke up the brewing catfight among the feuding Cabinet officials. Picking up on the language of the feud, Galvez declared: “The ball is being passed not because there are those who are abrogating responsibility but because we want it to reach the goal – to close deals and obtain vaccines for all Filipinos so that we can implement our national vaccination program at the most appropriate time.”

“Let me reiterate, no ‘bus’ was missed or no ‘ball’ was dropped because we are focused on our main goal, and that is, to secure an equitable share of the vaccines,” Galvez pointed out.

A retired Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff, Galvez is among the most trusted ex-military men in President Duterte’s Cabinet who now holds multiple positions in the government. Galvez is the head of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) and concurrently is the chief implementer of the National Task Force (NTF) in the anti-COVID campaign.

When he was guest in our weekly Zoom Webinar Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Dec. 2, Galvez announced at least 17 vaccine manufacturers worldwide are interested to have some form of “arrangement” to supply the Philippines with COVID-19 vaccine. According to Galvez, five of these companies are, in fact, already part of the GAVI-COVAX Facility, a mechanism that guarantees 20% of the Philippine population can be supplied with the vaccine.

Based on the Vaccine Roadmap Strategic Framework he presented earlier to the President in the IATF meeting, 11 novel vaccine candidates are currently in phase 3 clinical trials in the US. The “front-running” ones are from Pfizer and Moderna, both of which have already been issued with emergency use authorization (EUA) by the FDA of US. AstraZeneca was rolled out already in London after getting EUA from the FDA of Britain.

President Duterte has already given our own FDA the power to issue EUA for anti-COVID vaccines once our country gets its supply wherever it comes from.

Since negotiations are already on its advanced stages, Galvez noted, the anti-COVID vaccines of Sinovac from China and Gamaleya’s Sputnik-V from Russia are the “best case scenario for vaccine rollout” in our country by the first quarter of 2021 and Pfizer by third quarter next year. Is this why there is much fuss about Pfizer?