BAGUIO City’s freezers, specifically intended to be used for vaccine storage, are ready to be used once the jabs requiring ultra-cold conditions for storage arrive in the city.
Purchased near the end of last year, the freezers have undergone testing at the hands of the City Health Services Office (CHSO) to ensure that they are fully functional when the cold-stored vaccines arrive in the city.
The units have specifically been ordered to be capable of reaching temperatures of negative 80 degrees centigrade, which is necessary as the current Pfizer vaccine being distributed in the European Union and the United States requires storage at a temperature of at least 70 degrees below zero.
In order to ensure that the freezers are up to standards and able to store the Pfizer vaccines and any other cold-stored jabs that the city might acquire, the CHSO has been conducting test runs of the vaccine freezers and claims that the freezers are working properly and ready to be used.
According to Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong, the city stands to receive a total of 35,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines, enough to cater to nearly 18,000 residents in the city.
The city has spent an estimated P1 million for the freezer units, purchased from China at a cost of P230,000 per unit.
