Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Councilor David Tumulak is urging the executive department to consider buying freezers to store the coming vaccines.
In his privilege speech during the Council’s regular session on Wednesday, January 27, 2021, Tumulak said that although there are available storage facilities in the city, this is simply not enough.
The Department of Health (DOH) storage facility boasts of 10 by 20 cubic meters of storage space that can accommodate 500,000 doses of vaccines, but this has been reserved for the national government’s allotment for Cebu City.
The storage facility also has other vaccines for other vaccination programs of the DOH, which may be a cause for contamination.
The Zuellig Pharma storage facility can store Pfizer vaccines if the city chooses this brand, but cannot also store large doses worth P500 million as the city planned.
“Securing a vaccine storage that meets the respective temperature requirements of vaccines plays a critical role to ensure that the vaccine ‘cold chain’ is maintained and the efficacy of the vaccine be preserved,” said Tumulak in his speech.
With this, the councilor said there is a need to purchase ultra-low freezers suitable for COVID vaccines and portable vaccine containers for the planned inoculation of Cebu City residents.
Tumulak said the barangays should start looking for suitable vaccination sites in their respective jurisdictions for the vaccination program.
Finally, the City Council has agreed to request the University of San Jose Recoletos Basak Campus and ACE Medical Center to lend a portion of their institutions to be utilized for the vaccination program.
The Council has also agreed to request Mayor Edgardo Labella to allocate funds for the hospitalization of any individual who will have allergic reactions to the vaccine.
Tumulak is hoping that the city’s executive department will start proactively preparing for the vaccination program so that when the doses arrive, everything will be set for its distribution. /rcg