By Pearl Gumapos
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. on Friday strongly condemned the illegal selling of any COVID-19 vaccines, which was witnessed by operatives of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).
“As the National Task Force Against COVID-19 (NTF) emphasized, these anti-COVID vaccines have only been given an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by our Food and Drug Administration and therefore cannot be commercially sold,” Galvez said in a statement.
“We believe this type of unscrupulous activity does not only hamper the efficient and
effective rollout of our national vaccination program, but also puts our countrymen in
danger with the selling and eventual use of unverified anti-COVID 19 vaccines,” he added.
Galvez also said that the NTF is taking this matter seriously and they ensure that a thorough investigation on the matter will be conducted.
Those involved shall be penalized under Republic Act No. 11525 or the COVID-19 Vaccination Program Act of 2021.
“We already identified the lot numbers of the vaccines and a combined follow-up operation is now being conducted by a composite team of the Food and Drug Administration, NBI, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) intelligence unit, and Philippine National Police (PNP) to apprehend the offenders,” he said.
“The national government’s mission is to provide safe, effective, and free vaccines to all
Filipinos so that they can have an additional layer of protection against the disease and
we can bring back a greater sense of normalcy to our country,” he also said.
Galvez encourages the public to report these kinds of illicit activities in order to bring justice to those involved. -rir
