MULTIMEDIA

COVID-19 vaccine journey: from manufacturer to recipient

With different COVID-19 vaccines requiring different storage requirements, the smooth transfer of such valuable cargo can be quite challenging.

From the manufacturers’ factories overseas, the vaccines will be kept in dry ice coolers or freezers while being transported to their destination countries. From the airport, the cargo must then be cleared by the Bureau of Customs before they're brought to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM).

From the RITM, the vaccines will then be moved to regional warehouses and from there, they will again to transported to local government units (LGUs). 

It will then be the responsibility of the LGUs to allocate the vaccines to hospitals and vaccination sites where the vaccines will be administered.