By Costas Paris and Jared S. Hopkins
In Kalamazoo, Mich., a stretch of land the size of a football
field has been turned into a staging ground outfitted with 350
large freezers, ready to take delivery of millions of doses of
Covid-19 vaccine before they can be shipped around the world.
The facility is a hub in the sprawling supply chain Pfizer Inc.
has built to handle the delivery of a vaccine widely awaited as a
possible relief from the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S.
pharmaceutical giant says it wants to deliver up to 100 million
doses this year and another 1.3 billion in 2021.
Like other drugmakers testing potential vaccines, Pfizer is
urgently laying the groundwork with its logistics partners so it
can move quickly if its vaccine gets the go-ahead from the Food and
Drug Administration and other regulators around the world.
"It's the biggest-ever vaccination campaign," said Tanya Alcorn,
Pfizer's supply-chain vice president. "If we get the FDA approval,
we will be able to ship the vaccines very shortly after."
The New York-based drugmaker is working with Germany's BioNTech
SE on one of several experimental Covid-19 vaccines in late-stage
testing. Pfizer says it may know whether its vaccine works by the
end of October and that it could be ready to apply for
emergency-use authorization of its Covid-19 vaccine by late
November.
The company's effort to deliver relief to pandemic-weary
populations will revolve around refrigerated storage sites at two
of the company's final assembly centers -- the Kalamazoo facility
and another in Puurs, Belgium -- and rely on dozens of cargo-jet
flights and hundreds of truck trips every day. Distribution centers
in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., and in Karlsruhe, Germany, have been
outfitted for extra storage capacity.
Pfizer so far has spent about $2 billion on developing the
vaccine and setting up the distribution network.
The U.S. government placed an initial order for 100 million
doses, with the option to purchase 500 million additional doses.
The EU ordered 200 million doses with an option for another 100
million. Japan ordered 120 million doses and the U.K. 30 million.
Countries in South America and in the Asia-Pacific region also have
placed significant orders.
In a typical vaccination campaign, pharmaceutical companies
would wait until their product is approved before buying raw
materials, establishing manufacturing lines and setting up supply
chains to ship a vaccine.
Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla said that the company began
setting the groundwork for its supply chain in March, when it
kicked off its vaccine development.
"Ensuring over a billion people globally have access to our
potential vaccine is as critical as developing the vaccine itself,"
he said.
Pfizer says it is preparing for distribution in case the vaccine
wins authorization, with hundreds of thousands of doses already in
the company's warehouses in the U.S. and Europe.
To keep the vaccines safe in transit and to move them fast,
Pfizer designed a new reusable container that can keep the vaccine
at ultracold temperatures for up to 10 days and hold between 1,000
and 5,000 doses. The suitcase-sized boxes, which are packed with
dry ice and tracked by GPS, will enable Pfizer to avoid the larger,
temperature-controlling containers used in transportation, giving
it more flexibility to ship the vaccines faster since planes and
trucks won't have to wait for the standard refrigerated metal
boxes.
Pfizer expects to load those boxes on a combined 24 trucks a day
from Kalamazoo and Puurs that will move roughly 7.6 million doses
daily to airports.
The company plans to take cargo space on an average of 20
flights a day on planes operated by FedEx Corp., United Parcel
Service Inc. and DHL International GmbH to fly the vaccines as
close as possible to vaccination centers, ranging from big medical
facilities to far-flung hospitals. The air carriers are also in
line to handle the next leg of the vaccine's journey, trucking the
doses to sites close to where they will be administered.
Total delivery time, from distribution center to point of use,
is expected to be an average of three days, the company said.
Cargo airlines are scrambling to arrange scores of extra flights
to move the vaccines. They could hit distribution channels at the
height of the peak season for shipping goods ahead of the year-end
holidays, squeezing expedited shipping capacity.
Unlike traditional vaccine rollouts, Pfizer plans to bypass
distribution wholesalers, including McKesson Corp., which has been
tapped by the U.S. government to distribute Covid-19 vaccines
through the federal Operation Warp Speed program.
"For the most part, we are not going to be building inventory,"
Ms. Alcorn said. Going through wholesalers, she said, "adds time
that we don't have, and adds a touch point to a sensitive frozen
product, taking it off and on trucks."
Julie Swann, a North Carolina State University professor of
industrial and systems engineering, and a health-care supply-chain
expert who advised the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
on the H1N1 virus response, said the biggest complications in
distribution likely would come closer to the final point of
delivery rather than the first stages of shipping.
"Transportation from the manufacturer into a state is only the
first step of what needs to be done," she said. "The real
challenges that concern me have to do with the ultralow cold
storage. That is where we are in a space that is completely new for
our systems in the U.S. for large-scale and wide geographic
distribution."
Shipments may have to be unpacked and moved in smaller lots, for
instance, beyond the initial delivery point, increasing the chance
that temperature controls could break down, Dr. Swann said.
"As logistics become more complicated around the secondary
distribution, that's going to take a little bit longer," said Dr.
Swann.
Paul Page contributed to this article.
Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com and Jared S.
Hopkins at jared.hopkins@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 21, 2020 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024