Two vast football-pitch-sized facilities equipped with hundreds of large freezers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, will be the centres of the huge effort to ship the coronavirus vaccine, developed by US drug giant Pfizer and German biotech firm BioNTech, around the world.
Governments are scrambling to prepare for the rollout of the vaccine, which must be stored at -70C (-94F), after the announcement from the two companies that it was more than 90% effective and had no serious side-effects. The news sparked hopes of a return to normal life and a stock market rally, but now minds are turning to the practicalities of getting the vaccine quickly to populations across the world, in particular to the vulnerable people who need it most.
Nick Doyle, the managing director of the risk consulting firm Kroll, said: “It’s going to be a monumental challenge. We do have a duty of care for international populations. The poorer countries in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Asia, are going to find this challenging.”
Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, said news of the vaccine was exciting, but that it “presages significant cold chain challenges for African countries”.
Toby Peters, a professor of cold economy at the University of Birmingham, echoed those comments, saying: “The problem is particularly acute in the global south where many rural villages don’t even have a working vaccine fridge.”
Once they have amassed more data from clinical trials, Pfizer and BioNTech plan to apply for emergency approval for the vaccine from the US and other regulators this month and expect to start shipping the vaccine to other countries in December.
There will be 100m doses going to the US, 200m to the EU and 40m to the UK. Countries in South America and the Asia-Pacific region have also preordered the vaccine. Pfizer plans to supply 50m doses globally this year, and a further 1.3bn doses next year.
The centres in Kalamazoo and Puurs have already been making hundreds of thousands of doses of the vaccine. Other “freezer farms” in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and in Karlsruhe, Germany, are on standby to provide extra storage capacity.
From there, the vaccine will be transported in suitcase-sized storage boxes packed with dry ice (solid carbon dioxide) that have been specially designed by Pfizer. Each reusable box can hold between 1,000 and 5,000 doses at ultra-cold temperatures for up to 10 days. Pfizer said its vaccine can be kept for up to five days at fridge temperatures of 2-8C.
The boxes, which are tracked by GPS, will allow Pfizer to ship the vaccine faster – it expects a combined 24 lorries a day will be transporting them from Kalamazoo and Puurs to airports, moving about 7.6m doses daily.
The logistics companies UPS, FedEx and DHL are also getting ready to handle vaccines that need cold storage. UPS has built two freezer farms, one in the Netherlands and one in the US, to house a total of 600 deep-freezers that can each hold 48,000 vials of vaccine at temperatures as low as -80C. DHL has also opened a new cold facility, in Indianapolis, and FedEx has been adding freezers and refrigerated lorries.
Germany plans to set up 60 special vaccination centres equipped with ultra-low-temperature freezers. In the UK, the Department of Health and Social Care said it had provided GP practices with an additional £150m to support the vaccine rollout over the coming months.
Other coronavirus vaccines in development will not need to be stored at ultra-cool temperatures, including the one from the US firm Moderna, which can be kept at -20C, similar to home freezers.
Vaccines that are being developed by Johnson & Johnson of the US, AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford, and France’s Sanofi and the UK drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, are expected to be stored and shipped in an unfrozen state.
Gian Gandhi, of the Unicef supply division, the world’s largest buyer of vaccines, said Unicef and the WHO had installed more than 40,000 fridges to store vaccines in low-income countries, mostly Africa, in recent years. Unicef has also bought hundreds of millions of syringes and is storing them in Unicef-controlled warehouses ready to be shipped to countries once Covid-19 vaccines are available.
The Covax alliance of governments, global health organisations and businesses wants to deliver 2bn doses of coronavirus vaccines around the world by the end of 2021.
