Thus works the logistics that takes vaccines to every corner of Spain

1. Javier Ruiz-Tagle

Vaccine manufacturing centers in Europe are well known (Belgium, Holland, Switzerland or Spain) but what happens with vials once land in our country has always been relegated to the background, as if it were of course it was assumed that thetask of distributing it throughout the national geography was a mechanical task.Electionomist has traveled to, perhaps, the facilities with the greatest prominence in Spain, logist.

The company has current agreements with eight autonomous communities and is responsible for the distribution of the four vaccines approved so far in Europe: Pfizer, Modern, Astrazeneca and Janssen.The first unknown that is reached when the CEO of Logista Pharma (the company's medical division), Miguel Gómez, recounts these commitments is how they manage to maintain the temperature of some of these biological compounds.The answer is, visually, in facilities that reach 25.000 square meters (60.000 that the distributor group has in total for all its business areas).

Logista Pharma handles all the temperature sections that exist when talking about medication conservation.They have the capacity to store at temperatures of -70 degrees in guarded refrigerators where the dose of Pfizer is stored;at -20 degrees, where the modern roads are located, and between two and eight degrees, where Pales de Astrazeneca and Janssen rest.

Gomez also explains that his company is not a mere transport service.They offer more services to gain added value between competition.A proof of this are the boxes they use for the transport of these vaccines.They have designed structures that manage to maintain the appropriate temperature up to 48 hours after leaving the shipment, something useful to conserve vials in centers that are not prepared in advance.But there is another service that divides a crystal and that is not trivial.A dozen operators worked with piecework by packing syringes and serum for vaccines.

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Nothing special

When society and the media asked ourselves last fall how I could store, first, and then distribute the Pfizer vaccine, Gomez remembers that they didn't seem anything like the other world.As with almost everything on this trip, the words of the CEO were accompanied by tangible facts.Not only did that work done for other medications that need it, but they are capable of a liquid nitrogen system to store veterinary vaccines at a temperature of 196 degrees below zero."We distribute 200 million veterinary vaccines per year at this temperature," recalls surrounded by crowds of pallets of a famous pharmaceutical company linked to animal health.

Another test of your experience is the company's figures.Today they are leaders in the distribution of hospital medicines.In fact, they ensure that 60% of the total that are distributed in Spain do so, "a percentage that rises to 75% if we have only those who need a temperature of 2 to 8 degrees," adds the CEO, whileRemember that at that temperature they have the largest center in Europe with more than 8.000 Palets.

Logista Pharma has 12 centers between Spain and Portugal, where 5 are in the downtown area (mostly Madrid), three in Barcelona and others in Valencia and the Canary Islands.To date they have agreements with 250 pharmaceutical companies, both national and multinational.The signatories prefer to keep them secret, but given the insistence, Gomez ends up pointing out that "from the top ten, nine work with us".

The distributor also distributes to the pharmacies and there they again offer more services than they correspond to the cast.The distribution, above all, concerns OTC products (medications without recipe), cosmetics and parapharmacy "but we reach 22.000 Pharmacies, yes, we are not like the wholesalers who visit the establishments two and three times a day, we go every 24 or 48 hours, "says Gómez.The company also offers commercial strength to pharmacists with apothecates, which offer both human resources and data analysis, Bussiness Intelligent or incremental sales consulting.

For the future, the idea is to expand horizons.They have various investments to expand their facilities, they want to settle the business of bringing medications to homes and changing the image of the group, but these will be stories to tell on another occasion.