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UPS Healthcare has announced the expansion of its specialised temperature-controlled fleet across Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, and Trentino-Alto-Adige.

Previously covering Sicilia, Calabria, Lombardia and Liguria, the expanded fleet now covers 60% of Italy with a dedicated pharmaceutical transport network, providing an end-to-end service that can meet the evolving needs of the next generation of healthcare shipments.

“We’re investing to support our customer’s breakthrough therapies, which are among the most complex and sensitive medical treatments ever,” said Fabio Mioli, Managing Director, South Europe UPS Healthcare. “These critical treatments demand near-perfect levels of service, and our expanded fleet will play a vital role in offering a quality end-to-end service that ensures these treatments arrive at the right time and the right temperature.”

Logistics company United Parcel Service Inc has suspended all pickup, delivery and self pickup services in the southern Chinese cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan after strict restrictions were imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The U.S.-based company has also decided to set aside imported shipments in provinces such as Fujian and Jiangsu for sanitizing for a specific number of days. The transit time for shipments may be extended, it warned.

Multiple Chinese provinces and cities have in recent days tightened restrictions in line with Beijing’s zero-tolerance goal of suppressing COVID-19 as quickly as possible.

Atlanta-based global transportation and logistics services provider UPS recently announced it has formed a partnership with Novavax, a global biotech company, focused on the distribution and delivery of Novavax’ recently-approved COVID-19 vaccine to 27 European Union countries.

UPS said that the new vaccine is another weapon in the global fight against COVID-19. And it explained that because it does not require ultra-cold refrigeration, it can be more easily delivered to remote and rural areas that don’t have cold chain facilities. What’s more, the company added that UPS Healthcare’s European Network has been keenly focused on vaccine delivery efforts, with UPS having delivered more than 1 billion doses with 99.9% on-time delivery in more than 110 countries.

“UPS is proud to partner with Novavax to distribute its COVID-19 vaccine in the European Union and beyond,” said Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Healthcare, in a statement. “The extensive infrastructure UPS Healthcare has built in the European Union to handle temperature-sensitive products will make this life-saving vaccine and other needed healthcare products quickly available to hundreds of millions of people.”

Delivering millions of packages on time to the world requires a massive logistics operation that the United Parcel Service says couldn’t be done without the help of its weather team.

Based at UPS’ operational hub in Louisville, Kentucky, the army of meteorologists are some of the more than 500,000 workers employed by the Fortune 500 company worldwide.

“We have a bunch of locations that we do daily forecasts for. Our hub locations are where we have the greatest impact because that’s where the most people work, that’s where the most flights are in and out of,” Rob Clements, UPS aviation meteorologist, said.

Mike O’Donnell is a South Side bagpiper, who can be found playing his instrument during his free time in the parking lot of UPS to his fellow employees.

He works at the UPS Hodgkin UPS area hub. O’Donnell has played for bagpipes for more than 30 years after he started playing at the age of 19 year old.

He has appeared in the Chicago Saint Patrick’s Day parade and the South Side Irish parade, too. The UPS semi-driver has also competed in the City of Chicago Pipe Band in Wisconsin in 2021.