THE first set of protective gear that San Miguel Corp. promised to medical frontliners in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the country on Wednesday aboard a chartered Philippine Airline Boeing-777 flight from China.
The first 40,000 sets of hazmat suit was purchased through the P500-million fund earmarked by the firm to help augment the existing supplies of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for local health workers in the face of the global pandemic.
The chartered aircraft was filled to the brim with PPE sourced from suppliers in China, according to SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon S. Ang. These will be donated to various hospitals in Luzon, where most cases of the coronavirus are reported.
The shipment is also included goggles which is seen to help boost local supply of medical grade PPE, even as local manufacturers are also working to ramp up production capacity.
“We are very fortunate to have been able to buy this much PPE. Globally, demand is so high. Many of the big countries want to buy them all. That is why when the opportunity to buy this much came, we grabbed it, and chartered a large aircraft to bring the supplies home,” Ang said.
SMC earlier announced it was buying the first 10,000 PPE to be made by local garments manufacturers under the Confederation of Wearable Exporters of the Philippines (CONWEP). The group was tapped by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Health (DoH) to reconfigure their operations to ramp up local production of PPE.
SMC plans to continue buying locally produced PPE to donate to medical practitioners.
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