Fabrigas – a Key Asset in the Fight against COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our routines both individually and as a country. For many businesses, they have had to retool to ensure that income is still generated while protecting the health of their human resources. And while all that is happening, one company has been tasked with providing the entire country with life-saving medical oxygen. Today, the media was given a tour of the Fabrigas Plant and Oxygen Cryogenic Storage Facility and distribution hub on the George Price Highway in Belize City.
Leo Smith, Quality Manager, Fabrigas
“We are known for providing fire products, extinguishers, suppression systems. We do industrial gases; you know industrial oxygen is used in all the welding shops – helium, argon, acetylene used for welding.”
Duane Moody, Reporting
Birthed out of the south, they’ve been supplying the country for approximately three decades with industrial and medical gases. It has expanded tremendously since then and Fabrigas is today a key national asset in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in Belize.
Leo Smith
Leo Smith
“We’ve been doing a lot in regards to ensuring that the country stands ready with medical oxygen. We have over three hundred percent supply of the country’s needs and we also ensure that we monitor every hospital supply. We have a sophisticated telemetry network and at any given time, we know exactly where inventory stands for all hospitals when it comes to liquid oxygen. And we stand ready with assets to deploy at any given time for the country’s need in regards to COVID.”
Fabrigas provides oxygen to all medical facilities across the country and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased that demand. Belize is currently in its third wave of the pandemic with nine hundred and twenty active cases to date, fifteen hospitalizations and three I.C.U. admissions. And the organization is more than prepared.
Justin Sabido
Justin Sabido, Plant Manager, Fabrigas
“The attendants had to be monitoring cylinders and patients twenty-four hours a day. The hospitals do not have enough staff as it is so the added burden of continuous oxygen cylinder monitor became very heavy for them. Each cylinder weighs around a hundred and twenty pounds empty or a hundred and forty pounds full. So the attendance would need to drag the cylinders from storage areas and bring them across to the COVID wards at all times of the night, but at the same time be monitoring to make sure that none of the patients would be running low. We took up the administration of oxygen to patients another notch. So we installed the liquid cylinders, these microbulk cryogenic vessels, we ran piping into the COVID wards for them and we use our liquid oxygen delivery truck to deliver liquid oxygen. In the northern regional hospital, in Corozal Hospital, in the Western Regional Hospital and San Ignacio Hospital, we have these systems installed. In Medical Associates, Healthcare Partners and Karl Heusner, we had systems installed before. These systems are good because they are scalable. When the spike comes down, when the consumptions reduce, we can use maybe only one liquid cylinder or we can scale it down back to cylinders.”
Leo Smith
“We ensure to keep our stocks and inventory at optimum levels so whatever the need that arise, we stand ready to supply.”
A tour of the company’s plant and oxygen cryogenic storage facility and distribution hub shows that for some years now, Fabrigas has been International Organization for Standardization certified.
Justin Sabido
“It has never been overwhelming for us because we are prepared. We had that six-thousand-gallon tank in late November which we were feeding the entire country with. In late November we acquired an eleven-thousand-gallon tank which tripled our storage capacity. Pre-COVID, six thousand gallons was good for the entire country – it was good for all the medical patients and industrial applications.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
