Shock … no aircraft are equipped with refrigerators to transport Corona vaccine

The United States is the first country to use the Corona vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, but transporting the Corona vaccine out of the country remains very difficult.

There are many factors that must be taken into account when starting to distribute the Corona vaccine, and in addition to these factors are the very low temperatures in which the vaccine must be stored. Therefore, the amounts available or transferred of the Corona vaccine will remain limited, according to France Press.

So far, no aircraft are equipped to carry the Corona vaccine, and no passenger aircraft, not even a cargo plane, will be able to keep the Corona vaccine at a temperature of minus 80 degrees (minus 112 Fahrenheit) specified by the American company Pfizer. for your vaccine.

But Richard Forson, chief executive of Cargolux Airlines International, Europe’s largest air cargo company, said that passenger jets will be able to transport Corona virus vaccines at extremely low temperatures as needed, provided they are stored in specially crates. manufactured. That is, he relied on boxes to keep temperatures low.

Transferring the “Corona” vaccine around the world

Corona vaccine transfer:

According to France Press, the Pfizer vaccine, which will be distributed in the United States, will come from its largest production facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The shipment of vaccines will be a carefully regulated process between containers, trucks and planes.

The thermal transport containers will be filled with dry ice and 975 vaccine vials with 5 doses each for a total of 4,875 doses.

And every day, 6-dose trucks will be transported to airlines like FedEx, UPS and DHL, which will distribute them across the United States in a day or two and around the world in 3 days, as announced by Pfizer, and the group hopes to carry out about 20 cargo flights a day in the world.

And Julie Swan, an epidemiologist at North Carolina State University, cautioned that the vaccine would not be suitable for distribution in doctor’s offices and small pharmacies. At the very least, Americans will have to go to hospitals or even larger distribution centers set up in parking lots first, just like tests for infection with the Coronavirus are done, he said.

Corona vaccines can stay in their packages for two weeks, which means that hospitals will not need special refrigerators.

Transferring the “Corona” vaccine around the world

Janelle Roth of the Centers for Epidemiological Prevention and Control announced that at this stage we do not recommend that hospitals or clinics purchase high-cooling equipment.

The American company Moderna is also developing a vaccine for the Coronavirus that can be stored at minus 4 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, which is a normal degree for a freezer.

Pfizer expects to produce 50 million doses this year and 1.3 billion in 2021, and the United States has requested 100 million doses, including 20-30 million doses delivered at the end of December. The European Union recommended 200 million doses, Japan 120 million, Great Britain 30 million and Canada 20 million.

Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson, Johnson, Sanofi, and others expect their vaccines to be effective and safe for worldwide distribution.

Regarding transport companies, the transport company DHL announced that it could distribute 15 million portable refrigerators during the next two years, with about 15 thousand flights in the world.

Poor countries that don’t have a large capacity to store quantities of the vaccine that need refrigeration have little chance of benefiting from the first few doses, said Prashant Yadav, an expert on health supply chains at the Center for Global Development.

He said that the cost of high-cooling refrigerators can reach minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit, five times higher than standard refrigerators and are made only to order.