A look at how vaccine doses get to Conn.
The UPS workers delivering vaccines to local clinics know exactly where the vials sit inside their trucks. They know to always carry the boxes, which are marked with a special tracking sticker, with two hands, and to place them gently on surfaces. They also know to lock their bulkhead door before they start driving.
Over 800 miles away at the two U.S. command centers in Louisville, Kentucky, UPS workers in headsets watch every shipment on big screen monitors, using the embedded trackers in the stickers to locate them.
“I think most of our drivers, our sorters, our unloaders, they know that they’re a key piece to getting these vaccines to clinics and hos
pitals so they can get to arms,” said Dan Gagnon, vice president of global health care strategy and marketing for UPS. “Everyone’s fairly motivated to get these things done, hell or high water.”
And this is just one leg of the trip. The fragile, temperature-sensitive vaccine that a Danbury-area health care worker injects into a resident’s arm has a long journey to make.
From Memphis and Louisville to Connecticut and beyond
It starts when local providers place their weekly dosage order with the Department of Public Health. The department analyzes the requests alongside their federal allotment, and places their own order with the federal government, according to Maureen Fitzgerald, who runs COVID Communications for the CT Department of Public Health.
After a maze of requests and orders, the dose travels from the manufacturer to the UPS and FedEx carriers to designated local drop-off sites to health directors and other officials to clinic refrigerators and freezers and, finally, to the needle.
At FedEx, vaccines bound for Connecticut are picked up from Pfizer and McKesson facilities and flown in FedEx purple tail aircraft from Memphis to local airports like Bradley International Airport, according to an email from Savannah Haeger, a senior communications specialist for the company.
The average delivery time for vaccine moved by FedEx is less than 20 hours, and since December, their couriers have delivered more than 100 million doses in the U.S., Haeger writes. UPS has delivered nearly 140 million doses to 51 countries, according to Gagnon.
Both UPS and FedEx closely monitor packages bound for Connecticut and other states through technology embedded in the boxes.
“We really wanted to make sure that we had eyes on these vaccines every second of the day,” said Gagnon. “We’re always concerned about security.”
To date, these security concerns center more on counterfeit vaccines than they do on vaccine thieves. Gagnon said overall their deliveries are welcomed by communities.
“Most people, they celebrate the arrival of our drivers,” Gagnon said. “When they were receiving their first deliveries, many of the hospitals were making an event of it, as well they should.”
A careful transfer of vaccine power
Once vaccines make it to the towns, they are put in the care of local officials and providers.
Each vaccine brand must be kept at a specific temperature, and the vials arrive in manufacturer packaging that includes a temperature gauge, providers said. After checking this gauge, local providers’ main focus becomes keeping the temperature controlled as the vaccine is moved around.
Most Danbury-area vaccine transport and safety protocol follow the same patterns, with the health director or a few staff transporting vaccine from drop-off locations to the clinics, storing the vials in locked rooms with refrigerators and freezers that are outfitted with temperature gauges, and continuously checking on the vaccine.
In Brookfield, vaccines are delivered and stored at town facilities and then delivered directly to the clinic at St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy by the town’s health director and a staff member, according to First Selectman Steve Dunn. The health director loads the boxes into his car and drives them over. They’re then put directly into the temperature-controlled refrigerator and freezer in a locked room at the clinic.
Any temperature changes fluctuations result in an immediate notification for officials.
“These refrigerators cost $5,000, so they should be pretty good,” Dunn said.
At the Connecticut Institute for Communities, known as CIFC, in Danbury, clinic freezers and refrigerators have locks on them that only a limited number of people have keys to open, said Katie Curran, chief operating officer and general counsel for CIFC.
CIFC opened their second clinic on Main Street Tuesday, where they’re offering Moderna.
The CIFC drop-off location for vaccine is close enough to their two vaccine clinics that Curran said they can just walk the vaccine over.
New Milford requires staff to physically check the vaccine at least twice throughout the day, according to Health Director Lisa Morrissey.
“Twice a day someone just goes and checks the data logger,” Morrissey said. “No one wants to rely 100 percent on technology.”
At RVNAhealth, the state requires the use of a digital monitor on the outside of the fridge and a probe that stays internal, monitoring the temperature every couple of minutes, according to April Rodriguez, the community health nurse manager at the Ridgefield-based organization
“For us at RVNA, we have actual digital tags hooked up to the refrigerator to monitor any temperature excursions,” said Rodriguez.
The vaccines are stored in a locked lab room at the RVNA clinic, and an alarm notifies Rodriguez if the temperature goes too low or too high, the nurse said.
So far, no one has reported any major mishaps with vaccine temperatures or deliveries.
And now that clinics have been receiving vaccines for several months, providers feel they’ve mastered the transfer process.
“I think, so far, we’ve really gotten it figured out,” said Curran.