VICE President Leni Robredo yesterday questioned the effectiveness of face shields in preventing COVID-19 transmission, saying public funds would be better spent on medicines like the anti-inflammatory tocilizumab which is used for severe COVID-19 cases.
She also urged the government to expedite its study on other anti-COVID drugs amid the supply problem with tocilizumab which is being sold under the brand name Actemra.
Robredo joined Manila Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso in questioning the government’s move to require the use of face shields amid the Senate’s investigation into alleged overpriced procurement of medical supplies last year.
“I’ve been watching the Senate investigation… I hope the funds are being used for more important things, but it appears that it is going to corruption, affecting everyone,” she said in Filipino on her weekly radio program.
Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the government, at the seventh Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing last Friday, admitted to buying face masks based on suggested retail price (SRP), not wholesale price, which he said is “overpricing.” He said Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the government used the SRP as basis for quotation and approval of wholesale prices for the purchase of medical supplies.
Pangilinan said everyone knows that wholesale price is much lower than the retail price.
Robredo said she, herself, has been wearing a face shield “but I also don’t know how it helps in preventing COVID-19.”
The Vice President pointed out that while Philippines is the only country that requires the use face shields, the daily tally of COVID cases has now reached 20,000 a day.
She said public money will be better spent on COVID-19 medicines such as tocilizumab, noting that more than 30,000 Filipinos have so far died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began early last year.
Robredo also called for an increase in the budget of the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) under the proposed national budget for 2022, saying the RITM helps in the processing of certificates of analysis which are needed by local government units when getting vaccine supply from the national government.
She said the RITM has been slow in processing the certificates possibly because it lacks personnel.
The RITM, the country’s molecular laboratory which was the first to conduct COVID-19 tests, suffered a P170-million reduction in their proposed budget for 2022, from P393 million to P223 million.
Meanwhile, Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje said some 10,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines, out of some 40 million administered doses, or about 0.02%, have been wasted since the start of the nationwide immunization program last March.
“It’s minimal but still wasted opportunities,” she said.
She said the doses wasted include mostly those that faced storage problems, such as higher or lower storage temperature than the requirements.
“These are what we call temperature excursions,” said Cabotaje.
She said there are also incidents, wherein the jabs were dropped, cracked, gutted in fire, or are unlabeled.
As of September 18, DOH data shows 41,247,552 doses have been administered.
A supply of 190,000 doses of the second component of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine arrived on Saturday and will be distributed to parts of Metro Manila, Calabarzon, Central Luzon and the Visayas.
Sputnik V is the only vaccine which has different content for component one or first dosage and component two or second dosage. It is administered 42 days to 90 days apart.
Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez said most of the Sputnik V vaccines were administered in parts of Metro Manila, Cagayan, Isabela, and Bohol. He said the Russian vaccines will also be deployed to other areas in the Calabarzon and Central Luzon regions. — With Gerard Naval and Jocelyn Montemayor
