Americans Get Ready to Receive Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine

Americans are getting ready to receive millions of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine doses this weekend after AFD approval.

“As I speak today, right now, vaccines are being packaged with a lot of emphasis on quality assurance. To that end, tomorrow morning, vaccines will start rolling from manufacturing to distribution hubs,” said Gen. Gustave Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed. He added, “And then by Monday, vaccines will be received.”

Therefore, FedEx and the United Parcel Service will be key players in distributing the vaccine process, especially vaccine shipping needs a lot of special requirements.

“The reason we’re both here and we’re both doing this is because we’re the only ones that can,” said Richard Smith, executive vice president of FedEx Express, referring to both FedEx and UPS.

Furthermore, a number of measures will be taken such as giving priority access at the airport to the plans that carry the vaccine doses.

Another important rule the US should follow is providing an exceptional cold supply chain because Pfizer’s needs to be kept in minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, in a sealed box, with dry ice.

FedEx and UPS expressed their capability to move the vaccine doses from Pfizer storage sites in Michigan and Wisconsin to 64 states, territories, and major cities across the US.

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“We have the capability to serve every ZIP code in the United States of America,” said Smith. “This is what our network was built to do.”

“FedEx and UPS have split the country into two,” said Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Global Healthcare. “We know exactly what states we have, and they know what states they have.”

In fact, Both corporations have strong systems in place for transporting sensitive medical products and medicines, including networks of freezers.

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They also hired 170,000 additional employees; they revealed the vaccines would get the highest priority of all of their deliveries.

“The vaccine distribution and program implementation is going to be the most complex vaccination program ever attempted in human history,” Dr. Kelly Moore told CNBC, associate director for immunization education at the Immunization Action Coalition.

The process of distributing the vaccine will go as the following: doses are first transported from Pfizer storage sites to its freezer farm in Louisville, Kentucky. From there, UPS will load the doses onto planes and trucks.

Planes carrying the vaccine from both the UPS and FedEx spots will have special perks at airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will grant these flights priority to land as soon as they reach their destinations.

Regarding Ground transport, it will follow more strict measures, for example, drivers carrying the vaccine will be provided security escorts.

Vaccines can last for up to thirty days in Pfizer’s boxes, so long as the shipper is not opened more than twice in a day, for no longer than a minute each time. The dry ice also needs to be replaced every five days.

On Friday, US President Trump announced in a video, posted on Twitter, that Covid-19 vaccines are ready, assuring citizens that they are safe and free for everyone.

Trump stated that Pfizer had “passed the gold standard of safety,” hailing the vaccine as “one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history.”

The vaccine is “medical miracle” that will “save millions of lives and end the pandemic once and for all,” pointing that the first doses would be administered in the U.S. “in less than 24 hours.”