United Airlines began operating charter flights on Friday to move shipments of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for rapid distribution if the injections are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The mass inoculation program is expected to begin in late December, according to a report.
The initial flights are the first step in a global supply chain, which is being put together to address the logistical challenge of distributing Covid-19 vaccines. Pfizer has been laying the groundwork to move quickly if it gets approval from the FDA and other regulators around the world report that Wall street journal.
United had applied for permission to transport more dry ice than is normally allowed on flights to maintain the extremely low temperatures necessary to prevent Pfizer’s vaccine from spoiling.
The airline reportedly received special permission from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to fly larger amounts of dry ice, to keep the vaccine cold.
The Pfizer vaccine must be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius. Pfizer has designed suitcase-sized boxes packed with dry ice to keep vaccine doses cool, avoiding the larger temperature-controlling containers used in shipping, giving you more flexibility to ship vaccines more Quick.
Pfizer’s distribution plan also includes cold storage sites at the pharmacy’s final assembly centers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, and expansion of storage capacity at distribution sites in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. And in Karlsruhe, Germany, in addition to dozens of cargo flights and hundreds of truck trips each day, the report adds.
United plans to fly chartered cargo flights between Brussels International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport to support vaccine distribution, according to a Nov. 24 letter from the Federal Aviation Administration seen by WSJ.
The FAA said in a statement Friday that it was supporting the “first mass air shipment of a vaccine” and is working with airlines to safely transport Covid-19 vaccines.
According to the latest updates, the United States plans to distribute 6.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in the first week after it is authorized for emergency use, which is likely to be next month.
A committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) meets on December 10 to decide whether to give the drug the green light, and the United States faces a dizzying number of deaths and new cases.
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