San Juan solon received Pfizer vaccine doses after receiving Sinopharm vaccine doses.
On Monday, a congressman from San Juan City admitted that he received two Pfizer vaccine doses after receiving two Sinopharm vaccine doses last year.
San Juan Representative Ronaldo Zamora started his speech without a face mask in a public event, saying: “Kung nagtataka kayo bakit si Congressman Zamora ay hindi nagma-mask, sasabihin ko sa inyo. I have been vaccinated twice, twice over. Apat.“
The national government had not given a go-signal for those fully vaccinated with two doses of COVID-19 vaccine to take any additional COVID-19 vaccine dose so far, but Zamora reasoned that he got a “bootleg” COVID-19 vaccine brand which was also administered to President Rodrigo Duterte.
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Zamora also noted that it means he wouldn’t have a document or vaccination form that will allow him to travel to other countries. He then went on to say that the United States and European countries didn’t allow any Chinese-made vaccines, unlike the Philippines that accepted almost all vaccine brands.
According to Zamora, a person can only enter if one got COVID-19 vaccine doses from Western brands such as Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Moderna vaccine, or Janssen vaccine.
Zamora bared that he completed his Sinopharm vaccine dose last December — ahead of the national government’s COVID-19 vaccination program rolled out in March this year.
He also said that it was his doctors who advised him to take not one additional dose, but two additional doses since he’s immunodeficient. Zamora later told reporters that he received Pfizer vaccine as his additional doses.
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His son, San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora, said in a separate briefing that the congressman had a history of undergoing a heart bypass surgery and a kidney transplant.
Currently, only seven COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have doses authorized for emergency use by the Philippine Food and Drug Administration. They are Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Sputnik V, Janssen, Bharat Biotech, Moderna, and Sinovac.
Sinovac was the only Chinese brand that received regulatory approval from the Philippine Food and Drug Administration but has the steadiest supply in the Philippines.
Previously, Sinopharm received an emergency use authorization but only for the donated batch used to vaccinate President Duterte, his close-in security group, and other public officials after the Food and Drug Administration granted a compassionate special permit last February.
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