ONE storage tank at cord-blood banker Cordlife Group : P8A 0% was found to have hit a temperature as high as 20.4 degrees Celsius in 2021, according to a report obtained by The Business Times. This was way over both international standards, as well as the company’s internal acceptable temperature range.

Cordlife is scrutinising lab reports and work communications of key personnel in its laboratory, as it attempts to determine why critical incidents or “temperature excursions” involving several cord blood units (CBU) storage tanks were not immediately reported and escalated.

Among management’s discoveries – cord blood samples were moved without proper records and documentation, and a “significant number of samples” may have been moved to a dry shipper that recorded instances of irregular temperatures in 2019.