The Novel Tracking And Monitoring Technology Getting The COVID-19 Vaccine Distributed Across the U.S.

As the delivery truck snaked its way over Northern California’s interstates and two-lane highways, a team of analysts watched over nearly every aspect of its journey in real-time. They could see the stops the driver took, they knew the weather outside and, most importantly, they knew the condition of the precious cargo onboard: thousands of doses of COVID-19 vaccine. In the back of the truck, boxes packed with vials of Pfizer/BioNTech’s newly authorized vaccine were loaded onto customized trays, resembling small pizza boxes, each carrying a minimum of 975 doses. The containers were packed with sensors, tracking devices and dry ice, which enabled the team to watch as the temperatures of two of the trays—one destined for Napa, Calif.; another to Sonora, Calif.—plunged below the accepted threshold of -112°F. A call was made to the truck driver to stop, and keep the trays in the vehicle. “They never left the truck,” Army General Gustave Perna, the commander overseeing logistics for the U.S. federal vaccine program, told reporters on Wednesday. “We returned them immediately back to Pfizer and we sent immediate shipments to replace those two trays.” Shipping COVID-19 vaccine is a daunting challenge, not only because of the logistics involved in distributing millions of small glass vials to each corner of the country, but also because the doses must be kept frozen at far below normal freezer temperatures for the entire trip. To en...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news