Are Airlines and Cargo Companies Ready to Ship a COVID Vaccine?

Health experts have warned that the COVID-19 pandemic will not really “end” until all coronavirus cases are treated and vaccinated.

That task could prove a major problem for private freight companies, especially air cargo carriers, if a potential vaccine requires specific storage conditions such as extreme cold.

Marketplace Morning Report host David Brancaccio spoke with Julian Sutch, Emirates SkyCargo Pharmaceutical Division Chief, about some of the major logistical issues related to global distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine and what they can do to start addressing them. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David brancaccio: You and your team do this for a living. I mean, do you think the industry is prepared for what it will take to hope vaccines where they should go?

Julian Sutch: You know, there are a lot of potential challenges out there. I think fortunately many people are quickly picking up on these challenges. And they are all very focused on working together to try to overcome some of these challenges that we can potentially face.

Brancaccio: This is going to take a lot of planes. You have some of them. Are there enough?

Sutch: There is a lot of capacity on the market, right? But I mean, there are a lot of variables that have happened recently with COVID. And, of course, all airlines had to ground their fleets of planes. So very quickly we were able to start taking our planes to different markets to start moving products once COVID has impacted the world. However, you know, there is a large proportion of the world’s air cargo that is carried in the belly of passenger planes. And many of these are still grounded. So, there have been capacity limitations. But I think it’s about priorities, so when we saw the flood of EPP teams, moving all over the world. But it really all depends on the season when these vaccines will potentially be ready. Hopefully, I think the answer is yes. There will be capacity, but I think it is very important that the focus is on moving this capacity.

The challenges of shipping vaccines at low temperatures

Brancaccio: Now, your people have experience not only in the transport of products and other cargo, but also in medicines, but also in medicines that need some refrigeration: minus 5 degrees Celsius, 23 degrees Fahrenheit. But what if some of these vaccines need super cold refrigeration like the temperature of dry ice, minus 80 degrees Celsius? That is a special challenge.

Sutch: Right. Generally, pharmaceuticals move 2-8 degrees and 15-25 degrees, but vaccines predominantly move 5 degrees. Now, this COVID vaccine is different. And some of the manufacturers have come to us and gone out into the world to say that they are going to have to move deep frozen. Now when you move deep frozen there are a lot more complexities to that. There are several different passive packaging solutions that you can use. But okay, what is needed is dry ice. And if you are deep-freezing, you need large amounts of dry ice. So airplanes have dry ice limitations too, right? So dry ice is classified as a dangerous good. And depending on, you know, Boeing or Airbus, or the manufacturers and our engineering teams basically come out with the assignment on the plane. So there will be some difficulties moving, say, large volumes of dry ice on the plane.

Brancaccio: I mean, we live in a time, right, where there are restrictions that limit the spread of the coronavirus, which could add friction at international borders. Are efforts being made to reduce the chances of these obstacles getting in the way of moving vaccines?

How Coronavirus Travel Restrictions Could Complicate Shipping a COVID Vaccine

Sutch: I believe that as Emirates and as an airline, our responsibility is to speak to our customers, being the senders and especially our freight forwarders, with whom we work very closely. And our job is to move those vaccines when they are needed, in the volumes they are needed, to the destinations they need to go to. When it comes to any other factor around that, I think it’s potentially out of our scope of work. I think what’s going to be different with these vaccines is that, you know, predominantly these, they move from shippers to consignees, distributors, etc. But this is going to be controlled by governments, as far as I know. So our position as an airline is to make sure we keep these vaccines at the right temperature, moving the volumes that are needed from manufacturing sites to wherever they go.

Brancaccio: You mentioned the Triple Seven, the Boeing 777. I mean, is that when it’s a cargo configuration that can carry a massive amount of cargo?

Sutch: Right. So, like Emirates, we have a fleet of Triple Seven freighters. And we also have a lot of Triple Seven passenger aircraft. So if you were looking at a dedicated Triple Seven cargo plane, you’d be looking to move over 100 tons. In a passenger, let’s say you have a passenger plane full of passengers, you can receive up to 25 tons, let’s say, in the belly of that plane. However, if you then use dense load dynamics, I mean, I can give an example of like gold and mangoes and fruit and stuff, which is very dense, then you can dramatically increase the amount of weight you can carry.