Zamboanga City gets fresh medical-grade O2 supply

Mayor Maria Isabelle Salazar said the local government has purchased a fresh supply of medical-grade oxygen in an effort to help private and government hospitals cope with the shortage of oxygen in Zamboanga City due to the spike in Covid-19 cases.

Salazar said a tank container with some 13,357 cubic meters of liquid oxygen has arrived and said another shipment is forthcoming. The oxygen was procured by the local government from Taiyo Nippon Sanso Philippines Inc. in Misamis Oriental province where it has a plant in Tagoloan town.

The mayor said the purchase of the oxygen was facilitated by the Department of Health and the national government’s Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Infectious Diseases. The oxygen shipment is equivalent to 2,300 cylinders of 50 pounds each. Oxygen weighs 0.001429 gram per cubic centimeter or 1.429 kilogram per cubic meter.

She added that the oxygen will be distributed to the Zamboanga City Medical Center (ZCMC), some private hospitals and the Covid-19 isolation facility in Barangay Pasonanca.

The ZCMC alone uses at least 350 cylinders of oxygen for its Covid-19 wards.

In September, the local government also purchased one tank of liquid oxygen from Cebu province and distributed it to hospitals.

Zamboanga City now has nearly 2,500 active Covid-19 cases. The Manila Times