Here’s how United may fly COVID-19 vaccine
AMILLION DOSES ON ONE JET AND 15,000 POUNDS OF DRY ICE
United Airlines’ 55,000-square-foot cargo facility just south of the terminals at O’Hare International Airport has kept humming during the coronavirus pandemic with planes unloading containers carrying anything from mail and packages to pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment.
NowUnited is gearing up for an influx of even more critical cargo: theCOVID-19 vaccine. Chicago officials are preparing for the rollout, including an initial shipment of 23,000 doses.
Getting millions of doses to people across the U.S. will require a massive logistical effort with an extra challenge: vaccines that must be kept far more frigid than typical cargo. United is just one of several airlines and shipping companies gearing up for the push.
“We just want to position ourselves to be prepared to do whatever we can to help with the global distribution,” said Chris Busch, United Airlines’ managing director of cargo.
While it’s not yet clear howlarge a roleUnited or its Chicago hub will play, the city is so central to the transportation industry that “in almost any logistical operation, it’s going to be coming through Chicago,” said HaniMahmassani, director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center.
The first mass air shipment of a vaccine already took place late last month, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. That flight was a United flight carrying doses of Pfizer’s vaccine from Brussels to O’Hare, TheWall Street Journal reported.
United declined to comment on specific flights carrying the vaccine and its relationship with Pfizer or other vaccine manufacturers.
Transporting vaccines is nothing new for United,
which regularly transports medical cargo. United’s cargo facility at O’Hare, which handles both mail and freight, has three refrigerated rooms and batterypowered refrigerated containers that can keep cargo like pharmaceuticals cold during a flight, and a team of employees monitoring temperature-controlled shipments.
But the Pfizer vaccine wouldn’t be stored in those containers, because it must be kept at temperatures much colder than standard freezer temperatures: about minus 70 Celsius, or minus 94 Fahrenheit. The Moderna vaccine doesn’t need to be kept as cold.
Pfizer said it developed shipping containers for the COVID-19 vaccine that can maintain those temperatures for 10 days with no additional equipment beyond dry ice.
United and other airlines worked with the FAA to get permission to carry more dry ice than usual in the cargo hold. United, for instance, can pack up to 15,000 pounds on charter flights between Brussels and Chicago flown to support distribution of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, according to an FAA letter obtained by the Tribune.
Those planes can typically carry 3,000 pounds of dry ice. Dry ice is regulated because it turns to carbon dioxide gas at temperatures above about minus 109 degrees Fahrenheit, so airlines need to have procedures in place to keep carbon dioxide from building up in the plane, Busch said.
A single Boeing 777 can carry up to a million doses of theCOVID-19 vaccine. To unload, planes will park directly behind United’s cargo facility at O’Hare and lift the doors to the cargo holds, one at each end of the aircraft.
Containers roll one by one onto a platform that lowers them to vehicles waiting to drive them to the cargo facility, where they will be loaded directly onto refrigerated trucks for the next stage of their journey. The process can take less
than half an hour.
“We don’t want it at the facility for a long time,” Busch said. “Theywant it at the final destination.”
American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which also have experience transporting pharmaceuticals, have also been preparing for the rollout.
In mid- November, American began conducting trial flights between Miami and South America to test a vaccine’s thermal packaging and the airline’s handling process, American said in a news release. American said it has also been involved in transporting test vaccines and specimens used in COVID-19 vaccine trials.
Delta, which said it successfully transported test vaccines during the summer and fall, has a Vaccine Control Tower monitoring
shipmentsaroundthe clock. The airline has large warehouses and cooler facilities at airports in Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and Seattle that could handle flights where a vaccine must be stored at a controlled temperature, and 49 other airports that can handle pharmaceutical cargo.
The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically slowed air travel, but Mahmassani said he didn’t think airlines’ reduced flying would limit their ability to transport the vaccine. Throughout the pandemic, cargo-only flights have kept passenger aircraft that would otherwise be idle busy.
United said cargo revenues rose 50% during the third quarter, while passenger revenue dropped 84% compared with last year.
The airline has flown more than 6,500 cargo- only flights since March 19. Cargo-only and passenger flights have collectively moved more than 401 million pounds of freight, including 154 million pounds of “vital” shipments like medical kits, PPE, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, United said in October.
Shipping companies like UPS and FedEx, meanwhile, can carry vaccines by air and truck. While some vaccines will be flown in from Europe, Pfizer is also expected to ship some from its facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and a distribution center in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, near the Illinois border before sending them out to distribution sites, whichwill also need to develop plans for storing the vaccines at the required temperatures.
The trucking industry’s capacity is already tight, thanks to booming online sales during the pandemic that have risen even higher during the holiday season.
Vaccines will get priority over consumers’ holiday gifts, but that leaves less slack in the system if drivers get sick or equipment malfunctions, Mahmassani said.
At a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Transportation and Safety on Thursday, executives at UPS and FedExsaid they reservedcapacity forCOVID-19 vaccines.
“There will be no higher priority shipments in our networks than these vaccine shipments,” said Richard Smith, regional president of the Americas and executive vice president at FedEx Express.
FedEx, which transported 80 million H1N1 vaccine doses in 2009, has more than 90 facilities across five continents designed to keep items cold during transit, including a 20,000-square-foot temperature- controlled storage center at its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. It is also expanding its network of ultralow-temperature freezers, Smith said at the hearing.
UPS, which provided logistics support for Pfizer’s COVID-19 trial and is supporting eight vaccines currently in clinical trials, invested in a “freezer farm” that can maintain the extrafrigid temperatures Pfizer’s vaccine requires, Wesley Wheeler, president of global health care at UPS, said at the hearing.
The company can produce more than 24,000 pounds of dry ice each day at its Louisville, Kentucky, facility and plans to ship 40 pounds of dry ice to all Pfizer dosing locations after the vaccine arrives to keep it cold after delivery.