ILOILO City – The spate of brownouts plaguing this city in recent weeks is taking a toll on the city government’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response efforts.
According to Dr. Stephanie Abello, chief pathologist of the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC) sub-national laboratory, the hospital has to shift to time-consuming manual work whenever there are power outages hampering their efforts at COVID-19 testing.
“Over the weekend, we targeted to work on and finish the backlogs. We made a plan and strategized our schedule on what to do so we can perform 1,000 tests. But there was a long brownout so we shifted to manual extraction,” Abello said.
The laboratory could not utilize its automated analyzers, said Abello, because of the low capacity of the WVMC generator.
“So we were able to test a maximum of 400 only last Sunday,” she lamented, adding that despite having a power generator, their testing machines were large ones and the generator could not handle the additional power load.
Abello also decried the fact that every time there is power interruption, they have to slow down because they could not use their bio-safety cabinet during brownouts.
“It’s too dangerous. So we really need a continuous and stable power supply. We already requested a new generator set with a high capacity compared to the existing one,” she revealed.
Moreover, Abello said, to address the frequent brownouts they had to request an evaluation from their power supplier if they could have a separate transformer so that if there are overloads again in the common transformer, they will not be affected.
Iloilo City’s power situation has caught Congress’ attention that it has decided to intervene. AKO BISAYA party-list’s Rep. Sonny Lagon filed House Resolution No. 785 urging a probe into the status of the distribution of electricity in this southern City.
“Ang concern ko lang talaga is ‘yung mga consumers ng Iloilo. Sana hindi sila ma-apektuhan, lalo na ngayong pandemic. Ang problema kasi is ‘yung mga long brownouts na nangyayari,” Lagon said.
“There is a need for the House of Representatives to look into this to ensure that the supply of electricity in Iloilo City will not be affected and that the people of Iloilo City shall not suffer,” he added./PN
