Cold chain management solution for new COVID-19 vaccine

On September 6, at the 2020 China International Trade in Services Fair, domestically produced new covid-19 vaccines made their debut. Many of them have entered the final phase III clinical trials and are expected to be officially launched by the end of this year.

In 2019, the number of vaccines issued in my country is 580 million, and the increase in vaccines brought by the new crown is between 2.8 to 4.2 billion (2 to 3 doses per course of treatment). Industry insiders said that after successful vaccine research and development, the cold chain transportation market will increase by more than 7.2 times. In addition, there is a vast overseas market, and the global cold chain transportation demand will be very huge.

Pharmaceutical cold chain transportation is known as the top of the cold chain industry pyramid. Unlike the general fresh cold chain, the threshold for the vaccine cold chain is higher. Vaccines require the entire cold chain, and the temperature during the entire storage and transportation process must be constant between 2°C and 8°C, and the temperature must be monitored and recorded regularly. From the perspective of logistics alone, the vaccine cold chain has very strict requirements for hardware, software, full-process control, and related certification.

The vaccine cold chain requires pharmaceutical logistics companies to have the following capabilities: real-time tracking of location and temperature, high-performance packaging, multi-temperature control and multiple transportation modes (from factory to distributor/CDC, from distributor to large and small CDC, from CDC to vaccination point ). Vaccine circulation generally has two modes: (1) The traditional trunk line mode + regional distribution + intra-provincial distribution, and the distribution company is responsible for intra-provincial distribution. (2) Direct delivery from vaccine manufacturers to disease control and vaccination units in counties and cities across the country.

A complete vaccine traceability system should include four "fulls": full variety (including all vaccines), full coverage (all cold chain facilities related to the vaccine), full process (all circulation links, from production to before vaccination), and all-weather . Through the complete traceability and supervision of the whole process, it is realized that there is no "broken link" of the sub-cold chain in any link and any time period.

The storage and transportation of vaccines requires a series of complex processes. First, the vaccines are rolled off the production line into the vaccine cold storage of the production plant. The transport cooler box transfers the vaccine from the vaccine cold storage to the cold storage of the CDC. Each vaccination point picks up the goods from the cold storage of the CDC according to the actual demand. The vaccination point also has a small cold storage to store the vaccine. Storage and transportation are the key Link. The vaccine cold chain process is monitored throughout the entire process, and relevant data is managed and maintained.

The opportunities brought by the vaccine cold chain are not only in China but also all over the world. At the beginning of July of this year, a batch of new covid-19 vaccines for clinical research used by Beijing Biotechnology urgently needed to be shipped from Beijing to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Container also proposed an end-to-end one-stop service plan to complete the deployment of all domestic and foreign support resources, and safely deliver the phase III clinical new crown vaccine to Brazil.

Once the new covid-19 vaccine that is currently in the research and development stage is approved, pharmaceutical companies need to deliver large quantities of vaccine to the world as quickly as possible. As my country's leaders have repeatedly emphasized, "China's new covid-19 vaccine will become a global public product after its research and development is completed and put into use.”