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Mumbai airport to facilitate delivery of Covishield vaccine across 22 Indian destinations
The airport has a dedicated Covid-19 task force to facilitate advanced planning and collaboration between the airport and all stakeholders in this process, authorities say
Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) announced that it will facilitate the delivery of vials of Covishield vaccine across 22 destinations in the country. Starting early Wednesday morning, the first vaccine shipment departed from the airport at 5.20am to Goa through GoAir. It carried two boxes of the vaccine followed by a shipment comprising seven boxes to Rajkot at 6am through SpiceJet.
A CSMIA spokesperson said, “The standard operating procedures implemented by the airport in anticipation of the vaccine distribution saw the terminal register a cargo processing time of just seven minutes, right from goods acceptance to dispatch at ramp.”
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CSMIA is also set to facilitate the distribution of a total of 227 boxes, containing approximately 272,400 doses of the vaccine. These will be delivered to Goa, Bagdogra, Rajkot, Ranchi, Imphal, Agartala, Cochin, Bhopal, Kanpur, Jammu, Srinagar, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Gorakhpur, Raipur, Dehradun, Varanasi, Indore, Trivandrum and Jabalpur through SpiceJet, IndiGo, GoAir and Vistara.
An airport spokesperson said that of these destinations, Raipur and Cochin will receive the largest vaccine deliveries of 27 and 25 boxes respectively.
“The airport has deployed a dedicated Covid-19 task force to facilitate advanced planning and collaboration between the airport and all stakeholders in this process, the airline customers, supply chain partners, regulatory and governmental bodies, and vaccine distributors. It has also initiated a full-time 24x7 customer service cell for Covid-19 vaccine EXIM consignments, in order to address customer queries, pre-alerts and status updates,” added the CSMIA spokesperson.
Moreover, the airport is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities such as Asia’s largest temperature-controlled export pharma excellence centre and pharma-dedicated import cold zone and a first-of-its-kind cooltainer facility. It is also the largest hub of envirotainer movements with over 60 power outlets for processing active pharma containers. Additionally, it has an exclusive station dealing with storage and maintenance of both e-type, and t-type active containers that help facilitate the seamless distribution of vaccines across India.
In the wake of the pandemic, CSMIA has been operating its cargo handling activities to supply essential life-saving commodities across India and the world. The airport continues to undertake precautionary measures such as thermal temperature reading, social distancing, sensor-based hand sanitiser, mandatory PPE kits, and regular sanitisation of cargo facilities.
