It is one of many greatest logistical challenges in trendy historical past: How will tens of millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses that should be saved at extremely chilly temperatures be shortly shipped throughout continents and oceans?
One firm is utilizing its expertise with tuna as a information.
Thermo King — which revolutionized the transportation of meals by way of advances in temperature-controlled transport earlier than World Conflict II — is working with pharmaceutical corporations, governments and logistics companies to make sure vaccines are preserved as they journey to clinics and hospitals. To make this occur, they’ve reworked containers usually used to move contemporary tuna to Japan, which requires comparable frigid circumstances.
“We took that product and we amended it,” Francesco Incalza, president Thermo King Europe, Center East and Africa, instructed CNN Enterprise.
Tuna should be saved at -60 levels Celsius, or -76 levels Fahrenheit, to keep up its high quality and deep crimson hue when it reaches supermarkets and eating places, Incalza mentioned. The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech needs to be saved at -70 levels Celsius, or -94 levels Fahrenheit, whereas in transit.
So Thermo King, which is a part of Eire-based Trane Applied sciences, made some tweaks, including extra insulation and adjusting the refrigeration system so it might get even colder. Now, every 20-foot-long container can carry 300,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine — the primary to be authorised to be used by Western international locations following rigorous testing — by land or sea. Some have already been offered and are making their manner across the globe.
Incalza mentioned this type of innovation would usually take years to develop.
