The spate of brownouts that has been plaguing Iloilo in the recent weeks is already taking its toll on the city’s COVID-19 response efforts.

According to Dr. Stephanie Abello, chief pathologist of Western Visayas Medical Center sub-national laboratory, the hospital has to shift to time-consuming manual work whenever there are power outages, which hampers 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 what we shifted to manual extraction,” Abello said in an interview.

“We cannot utilize our automated analyzers because of the low capacity of our generator. So we were able to test a maximum of 400 only last Sunday,” she added, stressing that despite having a power generator, their testing machines are large ones and the generator could not handle the additional power load.

Abello also decried the fact that every time there was a power interruption, they have to slow down because they cannot use their bio-safety cabinet during brownouts because it’s dangerous. “So we really need a continuous and stable power supply. As of now, we already requested new generator set with a high capacity compared to the existing one,” she said.

Moreover, Abello revealed that, in order to address the frequent brownouts, they had to request an evaluation from their power supplier if they can have a separate transformer so that if there are overloads again in the common transformer, they will not be affected.

Iloilo’s power situation has gotten so severe that Congress has decided to intervene. AKO BISAYA Party-list Representative Sonny Lagon filed House Resolution No. 785 urging a probe into the status of the distribution of electricity in Iloilo City.

“Ang concern ko lang talaga is yung mga consumers ng Iloilo, na sana hindi sila ma-apektuhan, lalo na ngayong pandemic. Ang problema ko talaga 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 further said.