Illustration of an Air France KLM plane, which is organizing itself to participate in the battle for vaccination against Covid-19.

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Massimo Insabato / Mondadori Portf

  • Two laboratories filed an authorization to sell their vaccines in Europe at the start of the week.

  • Even before the green light from the European Commission, laboratories, the cold chain and aviation are organizing to respond as soon as the campaign can begin.

  • Getting the doses quickly, everywhere and in large quantities will not be an easy task.

Vaccination against Covid-19, season 2. The first part, that of research, is not yet finished, given that no vaccine has yet received the green light from the European Commission, prior when the campaign was launched in France.

Last Monday, the American laboratory Moderna applied to Europe for a marketing authorization, followed the next day by the American-German alliance Pfizer-BioNTech.

But the French government already imagines being able to vaccinate seniors in nursing homes against the coronavirus from January 2021. Hence a new challenge looming, and not the simplest: "a huge logistical challenge, beyond what our country was able to know ”, warned Olivier Véran this Thursday evening, during the presentation of the campaign on vaccination.

The equation is threefold: not only will it be necessary to transport an enormous number of doses, since the scale is global, but also to do it quickly.

And with rare constraints: the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can be stored at - 70 ° C (plus or minus 10 ° C), that of Moderna at - 20 ° C.

Once the doses have been produced, it will still be necessary to send them to all the departments of France.

Laboratories, the cold chain and aviation, among others, are already anticipating in order to react as quickly and efficiently as possible at the start.

Where will the vaccines be produced and stored?

"As soon as the authorizations are obtained, the companies will put themselves in working order to deliver to the delivery points decided", said Thursday Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister in charge of Industry.

Pfizer confirmed to

20 Minutes

that "the supply to France will be provided by (the) production site in Puurs, Belgium".

In mid-November, the French pharmaceutical subcontracting company Delpharm, based in Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre (Center-Val-de-Loire), announced that it would take care of the shaping of this vaccine.

In other words, put the product in bottles, check them and refrigerate them.

Before sending them to pharmacies across the country.

"We will use the road transport modes for hexagonal France and air for the French overseas departments and territories via our main transport partners, which are Fedex and DHL in the European Union," Pfizer explains.

The distribution will be made to 130 sites [a figure not confirmed this Thursday evening during the presentation] designated by the French State.

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To facilitate and secure this transport and storage at -70 ° C, Pfizer has designed a specific thermal container, at controlled temperature, using dry ice.

“The temperature level during storage has an effect on the shelf life of vaccines,” explains the American group.

So when each vaccination site receives the batches in their thermal containers, they will have three storage options.

If a very low temperature freezer is available, the vaccine can be stored for six months.

Otherwise, the thermal container in which the vaccine was transported can serve as storage and be recharged with dry ice for a maximum of fifteen days.

Finally, the vaccine can be stored outside its container, in an ordinary refrigerator at 2 to 8 ° C, for five days.

"

To avoid shortages in France, “we will use sensors equipped with GPS in each thermal transporter, with a control tower that will monitor the location and temperature of each vaccine shipment on their predefined routes.

These GPS devices will enable Pfizer to proactively prevent unwanted deviations and act before they occur.

"

For its part, Moderna has signed an agreement with the Lonza group, a giant in pharmaceutical subcontracting, to manufacture up to one billion doses per year.

If Lonza, in Switzerland, is responsible for the synthesis of the molecule, it is in France that the bottling will be carried out.

Indeed, Moderna should enter into an agreement in December with the Swedish pharmaceutical subcontracting laboratory Recipharm to package its vaccine against Covid-19 in Monts (Indre-et-Loire).

Road transport is organized

It is therefore mainly via the road that the vaccines will be transported to the packaging factories, then to the 10,000 French Ehpads during the first stage.

"All this requires having a specific organization, having freezers, syringes, protections," said Olivier Véran.

Who specified that there would be two distribution channels: a main one, which will be based on the players used to transporting these products.

A second, which will be based on a hundred hospitals.

"In the second half of December, this circuit will be blank tested," said the Minister of Health.

For refrigerated truck companies, this is therefore a huge challenge.

In addition to high speeds to get to nursing homes as quickly as possible, where deaths from Covid are still very high, the issue of temperature remains complex.

In fact, most refrigerated trailers store products at -20 ° C, an optimum temperature for Moderna's vaccine, but insufficient for Pfizer-BioNTech's.

Either the containers provided for transport by Pfizer will be sufficient, or it will be necessary to produce a large quantity of dry ice.

Asked by France Inter, Gérald Cavalier, president of the Tecnea-Cemafroid Group and of the French Cold Association, recognizes that the next few weeks promise to be tense.

“The technologies exist, we know how to do it, but today for smaller quantities, he explains to our colleagues.

There is no day-to-day logistics on a large scale.

Something will have to be built, a specific and adapted cold chain because the volumes, for the moment, are completely unknown ”.

Air France mobilized

Aviation will not be left out.

Faced with the vertiginous drop in tourist flights, Air France KLM, used for thirty years to transport this type of delicate goods, is ready to mobilize the devices nailed to the ground to participate in the battle for vaccination.

If, for Moderna and Pfizer / BioNTech, transport to France would be by road, it is not yet clear where the other vaccines would come from if they get a pass from Europe.

In addition, “we will have to transport them to overseas departments and territories, moreover the air link was used for the masks,” a spokesperson for Air France-KLM told us.

And we must not forget that in Africa, there is no production unit for these vaccines.

Covid vaccines have already been transported in phase 3 of a clinical trial between China and Chile.

We need this type of link, fast and which respects temperature constraints, given that the vaccination campaign will be global.

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How will these planes be able to avoid temperature changes?

"We have specific containers of two types, one that allows transport down to - 20 ° C, and the other down to - 70 ° C", continues the spokesperson for the group.

Which specifies that Air France-KLM has a total of 6 cargo ships (planes that do not carry passengers) that can carry up to 1 million doses and 175 long-haul flights where 400,000 doses can be loaded in the hold.

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