The Cold Chain Federation (CCF) is calling on businesses to prepare for the third Covid-19 wave, which is seeing countries around the world impose stringent lockdown regulations again.According to CCF chief executive, Shane Brennan, the past month has seen a major acceleration in the world for increased social distancing rules as health systems battle under the strain of the third wave of the pandemic.“This third wave has huge implications for the entire global economy as the world looks at harder lockdowns again,” he said during an online event. “This also brings implications for the cold chain. In the past few weeks we have seen a massive increase in demand for food products, placing the cold chain under tremendous strain.”Brennan said in the United Kingdom in recent weeks demand for perishable food products had been well above the levels usually seen around Christmastime in the country. “It places massive pressure on the cold chain because while it is operating, it does require the massive capacity to service these peak demand periods. Unlike in December when demand spikes, these peaks we are seeing at the moment are happening with little or no preparation at ground level.”He said the system was having to deal with a good deal of uncertainty and cold chain logistics operators were finding themselves in unprecedented waters.“Furthermore, the dynamics are changing very quickly – with the system going from requiring the huge capacity to deal with the spike in demand to dropping completely due to catastrophic slowdown in demand for food and food services.”He said there was currently a feast or famine approach in grocery volumes which in turn required the supply chain to adapt to the volatility.The cold chain has been under pressure for some time, dealing with changing consumer patterns while it was also having to deal with the movement of large-scale volumes of vaccines for Covid-19 around the world.Brennan said while the cold chain had to deal with uncertainty and constant change like any other supply chain, it had the added complexity of not compromising product integrity across different temperature regimes at any given time.“There is a difficult set of challenges in the cold chain to be dealt with at present."