Panelo defends PSG over COVID-19 vaccination

January 3, 2021

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo on Sunday said the rule of law was observed when members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) were inoculated with unregistered COVID-19 vaccine.

In a statement, Panelo said the PSG members, who are also frontliners, took the initiative to have them vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect the life of President Rodrigo Duterte.

“Contrary, therefore, to the insinuation of Senator Frank Drilon and other critics, the rule of law was observed. The PSG's action, aside from being legally valid, is consistent with — and pursuant to — its duty of securing the life of the President at all cost,” he said.

Panelo said PSG members cannot be held liable for manufacturing, importing, exporting, selling, offering for sale, distributing, or transferring any new drug, including vaccines, without the proper authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“While existing laws provide that any new drug should have previous authorization from the Food and Drug Administration based on an application containing full reports of investigations to show whether it is safe, efficacious and of good quality for use based on clinical studies, a reading of the same shows that prohibited actions relative to new drugs presupposes that they were undertaken pursuant to commercial transactions,” he explained.

“Necessarily, the end-users of an unregistered vaccine, in this case PSG members, cannot be held liable for manufacturing, importing, exporting, selling, offering for sale, distributing, or transferring any new drug, including vaccines, without the proper authorization from the FDA,” he added.

Panelo said the soldiers were vaccinated without the use of public funds.

“Hence, this issue is not a matter of who should have received the vaccine first as the PSG's undertaking was not government sponsored nor sanctioned — their members acting on their own initiative,” he said.

“Furthermore, they put their lives on the line to protect the President from being infected with the virus,” he said.

Panelo said the soldiers should not be criticized and instead be commended for putting their lives on line.

He added their action has not caused any damage or injury to anyone and the priority list for those to be inoculated under the government's vaccination program is unchanged.

“We note that the efficacy of the vaccine is not 100 percent and is without FDA approval, members of the PSG, being frontliners, took the risk of endangering themselves just so they can accomplish their duty of protecting the President from COVID-19 infection,” he said.

“As to those individuals who use their own resources in administering unto themselves unsanctioned vaccines, believing that the same is in accordance with their call of duty, they do so at their own risk,” Panelo added. Ella Dionisio/DMS