MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Navy’s BRP Bacolod City (LS-550) is en route to Davao City, its first stop in unloading personal protective equipment (PPE) sets that were bought by the Philippines for P1.8 billion from China.
The ship, which left Zhangzhou Harbor in the port of Xiamen on Thursday (April 29), is expected to arrive in President Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown later this week, the Philippine Navy said in a statement.
The BRP Bacolod City is bringing home at least 700,000 KN95 face masks and 200,000 sets of PPE that the Philippine government had bought from China. The medical supplies are in 33 shipping containers lent by Pacific Roadlink Logistics, Inc.
The Philippine government had purchased 1 million PPE sets from China for health workers and others on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19. Each PPE set consists of an N95 mask, goggles, coveralls, head cover, shoe cover, surgical mask, gloves and surgical gown.
Bringing home the items to the Philippines, however, proved to be a challenge.
The Philippine Air Force had started bringing home the PPE sets in tranches since early April.
The Navy ship will unload the first batch of the PPE in Davao City, then head to Cebu City to unload the next batch. Its final stop would be Manila.
When the vessel left China, a People’s Liberation Army Navy ship with bow number 588 escorted them to the open seas. No crewman of the ship exhibited any symptoms of COVID-19 when it left, the Navy said.
The Philippine government, according to Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, was to purchase 3 million more PPE sets from China.
Through a loan from the Asian Development Bank, the Philippines also bought $24 million worth of lab equipment for coronavirus testing from China.
The purchases came ahead of a report by Associated Press quoting US State Secretary Mike Pompeo as accusing China of initially concealing how serious the contagion was to hoard on essential medical supplies.