San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora announced that the city government will conduct another COVID-19 vaccination simulation at the San Juan gym on January 21 after successfully carrying out its two-day dry run of the vaccination process prior to the arrival of the vaccine.
Zamora said the simulation will run the process from storage to vaccination and post-vaccination observation and also to familiarize healthcare workers who were trained by the Department of Health (DOH).
He said in its first two simulations, it took 20 minutes for an individual to get inoculated from registration.
“We aim to lessen our processing time so we can vaccinate as many San Juaneños in a day. So we plan to help several more simulations so we can better identify which areas need to improve,” Zamora said.
The mayor will also show the storage facility for the conventional vaccines that the city purchased which need only 2-8°C storage.
Zamora said the city government has prepared several conventional freezers which have already been set up at the San Juan gym which is one of the primary vaccination centers in the city located beside the San Juan Medical Center.
He said that aside from their initial order of 100,000 doses from AstraZeneca, the national government also announced during a Metro Manila Council meeting with vaccine czar Sec. Carlito Galvez that they will be distributing Pfizer-made COVID-19 vaccine to different cities.
“We will no longer buy cold storage for the Pfizer vaccines, instead, we are renting because this will be more cost-efficient for our city,” Zamora said.
The Pfizer vaccine requires a -70°C storage temperature for it to remain viable.