# The challenges and perils of transporting millions of COVID-19 vaccines with dry ice across the U.S.
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The challenges and perils of transporting millions of COVID-19 vaccines with dry ice across the U.S.
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There are safety concerns that transporting large quantities of dry ice on airplanes, which can emit carbon dioxide, poses a danger, experts say.
Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine candidate requires freezing temperatures in order to be effective, according to the companies. That complicates the distribution process if their vaccine receives Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
When you order a gift from Amazon
AMZN,
the process of getting the item you purchased to your doorstep is fairly straightforward.
But transporting a coronavirus vaccine, if and/or when emergency-use authorization is granted in the U.S., requires arctic temperatures.
Also see: What we still don’t know about COVID vaccines after the U.K.’s emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech candidate
The Pfizer/BioNTech
PFE,
BNTX,
vaccine candidate is one of three front runners currently working their way through trials. It has been developed in a record 10 months. It has already been granted emergency-use authorization in the U.K.
Moderna Inc.
MRNA,
is also developing an mRNA vaccine, and has said it generated a 94.5% efficacy rate in its late-stage trial. Moderna is seeking U.S. and EU emergency-use authorizations for its candidate.
A third vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca PLC with
AZN,
Oxford University — a viral vector-based vaccine — recently produced some confusing results, with the vaccine appearing 62% effective when tested as originally planned but 90% effective when a manufacturing error lead to a reduced initial doze for some volunteers.
Pfizer expects to deliver 50 million doses of its vaccine worldwide by the end of the year, while Moderna expects to deliver 20 million.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is to meet on Dec. 10 to review the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine candidate and could also issue an emergency-use authorization.
There are two main ways to maintain -70° C (-94°F) — the temperature Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine requires — dry ice and temperature-controlled refrigeration units.
The Moderna vaccine, which is also being reviewed for an EUA, “remains stable at 2° to 8°C (36° to 46°F), the temperature of a standard home or medical refrigerator, for 30 days,” according to a Nov. 16 company statement. After 30 days, its vaccine can remain stable for up to six months at -20° C (-4°F) for up to six months.
Dry ice has a financial advantage over refrigeration units.
That may explain why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged health-care providers not to purchase the ultra-low temperature freezers in late August, saying it was working on solutions for Pfizer’s “very complex storage and handling requirements,” according to Reuters.
Additionally, “if you’re sending a batch of the vaccines up to northern Minnesota or to a small community where they’re going to get vaccinated, the likelihood of them having a refrigeration system is slim,” said Richard Gottwald, chief executive of the Compressed Gas Association, a trade group.
Constructing a refrigeration system for the vaccine “doesn’t make sense in the long term,” he added.
However there are safety concerns that transporting large quantities of dry ice on airplanes, which can emit carbon dioxide and, if packaged in a container that does not allow adequate release of the gas, can lead to combustion, experts say.
“The FAA is working with manufacturers, air carriers, and airport authorities to provide guidance on implementing current regulatory requirements for safely transporting large quantities of dry ice in air cargo,” a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman told MarketWatch.
The FAA has said it would allow United Airlines
UAL,
to carry 15,000 pounds of dry ice per flight — five times more than normally permitted, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier in the pandemic, Gottwald penned a letter to Vice President Mike Pence warning that there could be a shortage of dry ice due to the drop in Americans driving and factory production that produce carbon dioxide — the frozen form of which is dry ice.
Don’t miss: When can I get a COVID-19 vaccine? Will the shots be free? Your vaccine questions, answered
Given that more businesses have reopened their manufacturing plants, Gottwald has said he no longer anticipates a shortage even as more cities, including Los Angeles, reimpose stricter lockdown measures to curb the exponential growth in new cases of coronavirus.
On Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, revealed that the first 170,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine, if approved, will be shipped in boxes that are equipped with dry ice and glass vials produced by Corning Glass
GLW,
that were specially designed to withstand the extreme temperatures needed. Corning supplies glass for Apple’s
AAPL,
iPhones.
December 3, 2020 – Governor Andrew Cuomo showcased a prototype of the box that will ship the Pfizer vaccine equipt with dry ice and glass vials produced by Corning Glass.
Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew Cuomo
The company, based in upstate New York, received a $204 million federal contract to produce glass vials for vaccines. Some 5,000 doses of Pfizer’s vaccine can be shipped in one these boxes.
By the fourth quarter of next year, Corning expects to “ship enough vials to deliver over a 100 million vaccine doses,” Brendan Mosher, Corning’s head of pharmaceutical technologies, told MarketWatch in an emailed statement.
Pfizer’s distribution plan calls for using either ultra-low-temperature freezers that “can extend shelf life for up to six months” as well as dry-ice equipt boxes for transporting its vaccine from its main distribution center located in Kalamazoo, Mich. Pfizer has a smaller distribution center located in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. as a base for shipping vaccines.
Pfizer constructed what it refers to as a ‘freezer farm’ roughly the size of a football field to house more than 350 ultra cold freezers to store its coronavirus vaccine candidate.
Pfizer Inc.
Unlike Moderna, Pfizer will not be working with McKesson Corp.
MCK,
the company chosen to distribute the vaccine by the U.S. government as part of Operation Warp Speed, both Pfizer and McKesson confirmed with MarketWatch.
“McKesson built large-scale, custom freezers and refrigerators with the capacity to safely store and process tens of millions of vaccine doses at strategically located distribution centers,” the company told MarketWatch.
“For the frozen Moderna vaccine, one temperature indicator is packed inside each vaccine shipment to enable those receiving and administering the vaccine to have confidence that the cold chain was maintained during shipment,” it added.
“We have added more than 3.3 million square feet of distribution-center space, including storage, to our distribution network to manage the scale of this project. For comparison, that’s twice the size of New York City’s Grand Central Station,” McKesson’s memo states.
David Matthews, a senior spokesman for McKesson said, “We aren’t releasing the number or location of the additional distribution centers,” and declined to comment further.
McKesson Corp.
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