As COVID-19 continues to surge up and down through most of the United States, healthcare providers have resorted to a number of different configurations to serve patients better.

All across the country, we’ve seen disused sports arenas, luxury hotels, and other facilities with the space to spare being converted into ersatz hospital space. As hospitals struggle with the flood of patients (and the resulting lack of space), these converted spaces have become a crucial part of treating COVID-19 patients over the last year.

With these new spaces comes an increased need for medical supply storage and organization. These medical facilities find themselves opening and closing at a moment’s notice, meaning they often need to find somewhere else to keep all their medical supplies until things start getting back to normal. Somewhere like local warehouses.

Overflow Medical Storage During COVID-19

Many warehouses are in a prime position to offer medical supply storage for converted medical spaces, particularly in larger metropolitan areas where you tend to see arenas or theaters being converted into emergency medical centers. If you want to offer your support for medical professionals during COVID-19, your warehouse will need to be able to meet the following needs:

Germ free medical storage: One of the biggest needs for medical storage is to make sure the shelves are sterile and free of cross-contamination. Before you try to offer your warehouse space to help store medical products during a crisis, make sure you have enough medical shelving to safely store and organize these delicate supplies.

Refrigerated storage: Above and beyond the concerns of spreading germs and avoiding cross-contamination, many medical products need to be stored at a specific temperature to maintain safety and longevity. Make sure you can offer refrigerated storage, and offer enough walk-in-cooler shelving to make sure you have the room to store everything.

Proper employee training: While your warehouse staff surely knows how to safely handle most normal retail products (or even food in many cases), medical storage still requires additional safety precautions and handling instructions above and beyond the norm. Make sure your staff is in the loop as to how these products should be stored and handled, and what extra precautions should be taken when the medical supplies start arriving.

Open communication with potential partners: Even if your warehouse is well equipped and ready for medical product storage, you still need to make sure you can offer the right help to the right partners. Before you reach out to medical facilities to offer your services, make sure to identify any potential partners that make geographical sense – your warehouse will only be able to do so much good in a given area, and lengthy transport times runs the risk of products getting damaged or spoiling.

The world of medical and pharmaceutical storage is bound to increase as the COVID-19 pandemic wears on, and your warehouse could offer prime space for storage as needs arise.