The Department of Health on Wednesday clarified only 0.03 percent of the P7.431 billion worth of medical supplies have actually expired, rejecting an earlier report of the Commission on Audit.

"Only 0.03% were found to have actually expired, while only 1.16% were found to be near expiry," the Health Department said in a written response to questions submitted by reporters.

According to the DoH, the state auditors "focused on the proper disposal of expired drugs and medicines not on the expiration per se given that the hospitals/facilities were able to justify the cause/s of the expiration, therefore, those were not highlighted in the audit."

Last week, state auditors released a report about the P7.43 billion worth of medicines, drugs, and other types in the DoH's inventories that were found to be expired, nearly expired, or damaged.

However, the Health Department said that 95.81 percent of its total inventories are not expired and only pertain to slow-moving, undistributed, or overstocked inventories.

Meanwhile, the agency attributed the expired medical supplies to the low number of patients seeking treatment at government hospitals.

It noted that most of the expired medicines were distributed to different DOH hospitals across the country which were unutilized due to the lower number of patients going to hospitals fearing COVID-19.

"The rest were stocks in DOH regional offices which remained undistributed due to refusal of implementing units to accept new stocks citing sufficiency of existing stocks," it added.