Taguig secures cold storage facility for COVID-19 vaccines

REFRIGERATED WAREHOUSE Taguig City will use Orca’s Cold Chain Solutions’ cold storage facility in Barangay Bagumbayan to store COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Taguig City has partnered with a world-class firm to ensure there would be enough space to store the COVID-19 vaccine doses ordered by the city, and even those procured by neighboring cities.

The Taguig government said it had tied up with Orca’s Cold Chain Solutions to use its 6,500-square-meter facility in Barangay Bagumbayan as cold storage for the COVID-19 vaccines it bought from UK-based biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.

Vaccine vials of AstraZeneca need to be stored and transported at normal refrigerated temperature of between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.

Other vaccines, such as those developed by Pfizer and Moderna, need subzero temperatures.

Personnel of the city health office and key officials of Taguig, led by Mayor Lino Cayetano, visited the facility on Friday.

The city government repurposed Orca’s cold storage facility, which was previously used to store items for pharmaceutical industries, supermarkets, food processing companies, and meat and seafood importers, among others.

The warehouse has a total capacity of 20,000 pallets. It has a 22,000 metric ton (MT) static storage capacity and can move 876,000 MT on an annual basis. The facility is capable of real-time monitoring with information technology software and digital technology.

Orca’s Taguig warehouse is accessible via South Luzon Expressway, Skyway and the C-6 Road, thus, making vaccine delivery accessible.