MADISON, Wis. — As many think about when they and their loved ones will have access to a COVID-19 vaccine, Robert Meisner is focused on what a challenge shipping billions of doses will truly be.
“It’s a daunting task and that’s why there are huge (groups of) people in government looking at these problems and figuring out ‘How can we do it? What’s the most efficient way?’,” said Meisner, the director of UW-Stout’s packaging program.
UW-Stout is one of only a handful of schools in the U.S. that offers a Bachelor’s Degree in packaging. He said his students are fascinated by the role packaging is playing during such an important time.
The biggest issue with transporting Pfizer’s vaccine is that it has to be kept at -94 degrees Fahrenheit.
“It appears that the packaging that works best is vacuum sealed panels, kind of like a thermos where they have vacuumed or evacuated all the ambient temperature and this will be able to keep it colder. But this is only part of the issue. We still need to have enough dry ice, have enough of this specialized packaging material, have enough in the logistics network to be able to handle this,” said Meisner.
He said companies such as FedEx and UPS are trying to prepare by creating “freezer farms” to store the vaccines.
The cold supply chain is used to transporting things like frozen foods, but they only have to be kept between 0 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit. So much of the shipping technology is not prepared for such a large task.
A study done by DHL estimates in order to get 10 billion units of the vaccine delivered, that would require 15 million cooling boxes on around 200,000 pallets, in 15,000 cargo flights.
But the pandemic has cut down on many flights. There are also regulations on how much dry ice can be on a passenger plane.
Meisner said the creation of dry ice using a byproduct of ethanol is also being affected.
“Corona has had people driving less and consuming more, therefore the amount of ethanol has been cut back because the demand is lower,” said Meisner. “It’s this chain of events that’s going to have to gear up and deal with it.”
He also said the way glass is made is having to change.
“The kind of glass that we currently make our vials out of doesn’t do well in those extreme cold temperatures. So the technology of the recipe to make glass, they have to remove some boron, which is an additive, to make it more resistant to damage in those subzero temperatures,” said Meisner.
Another aspect of DHL’s study showed that the vaccine would be available to 2.5 billion people in 25 countries, but that leaves out a lot of areas that simply don’t have access to the technology needed to store the vaccine.
These challenges at almost every turn are things the general public probably wouldn’t notice, but jumping each hurdle will be worth it when vaccines finally arrive.
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