Today, Friday 29, one of the new KC-130H of the Uruguayan Air Force (FAU) will make a trip to Germany to bring more than 300 containers to preserve the vaccines against COVID.
According to the Uruguayan news site Subrayado, the FAU will bring some containers purchased from the company va-Q-tec, which will be used to maintain the cold chain of vaccines against Covid-19.
The Government of Uruguay signed an agreement with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer – BioNTech to access 2,000,700 doses and with Sinovac for 1,750,000 doses. These vaccines will be added to those of the Covax fund for which the government reserved 1,500,000 doses.
Pfizer vaccines need to be stored at temperatures of -70ºC so they will be placed in special freezers arranged in the Carrasco Airport Cargo Terminal and from there they will be transported by the Air Force and the Army in thermal containers throughout the country.
These 300 or 400 thermal containers will allow the distribution of the doses of vaccines, a task for which all the means available to the Armed Forces of Uruguay will be used, such as the Hercules, the Aviocar C-212 and helicopters.
It is worth remembering that the history of the Lockheed KC-130H at the FAU is only just beginning to be written. They were acquired from the remnants of the Spanish Air Force (EdA) in excellent condition at a more than convenient price in December 2020. And only 16 days after being inducted into service, one of these Hercules carried out his first logistics mission to the Antarctica.
And now it’s time to cross the Atlantic again. The pandemic does not give rest and the personnel and the machines are demanded to the limit.