The Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) chastised the Department of Health (DoH) on Monday for allegedly using expired Covid-19 vaccines in its vaccination program.

“The Department of Health is injecting experimental vaccines past their expiration date,” said Dr. Erwin Erfe, director of the PAO Forensics Division and a lawyer, in a confidential meeting.

The certain PAO official who revealed to The Manila Times the existence of an FDA report listing 2,573 Covid-19 vaccine-related deaths also displayed a one-page “DoH Public Advisory” regarding the extended shelf life of Covid-19 vaccines.

The advisory, dated Aug. 23, 2022, and obtained by The Times, stated that the department is continuing to conduct stability studies to extend the shelf life of vaccines. The advisory was released to counter skepticism “about the vaccines that are now given to the public because of the extended shelf life that has not been changed on the label of each vial of the vaccine,” according to the Department of Health.

“The government ensures that every vaccine that is injected with an extended shelf life has gone through thorough studies and is still safe and effective against COVID-19,” according to the advisory.

However, Erfe and PAO chief Persida Rueda-Acosta questioned the DoH’s claims, claiming that conducting such studies takes a long time.

“The public has the right to know as it could be dangerous to their health. No result has been released yet to the public,” two top PAO officials stated to The Times.

“If they really conducted stability studies before extending the shelf life of the Covid-19 vaccines, then how and what was the result of the stability studies and how much did the government pay for these?” they asked.

Erfe wanted to know if the Department of Health collected enough samples from millions of Covid-19 doses before concluding that all expired vaccines are still effective and pose no risk to public health.

“Can the DoH really ensure the public that each and every dose of expired vaccine they inject is safe and effective and not hazardous to health?” he asked.

He also inquired whether the Department of Health, as a government agency, could legally administer expired vaccines under EUA (emergency use authorization) rules.

Erfe presented the FDA’s three-page document on the number of Covid-19 vaccine-related deaths to Judge Maria Cherell de Castro-Sansaet during the continuation of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 222 hearing two weeks ago concerning the complaint of some parents questioning the mass vaccination of minors ages 5 to 11. According to the report, 12 of the 2,573 people who died between March 10, 2021 and July 25, 2022 were children aged 5 to 11. The FDA stated in the same report that the deaths could not be directly attributed to the vaccine.

Erfe believes that if the DoH had followed such a protocol, vaccine-related deaths might have been prevented. He claimed that a person with comorbidities should have exempted from vaccination due to a pre-existing illness. Erfe affirmed that the DoH continues to keep the public in the dark about the serious side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.