Singapore (AFP)

In Asia, a region of the world known for its tropical temperatures and remote islands, delivering coronavirus vaccines while respecting the cold chain is a huge challenge facing a major pharmaceutical distributor.

Only a small number of countries in this region have launched large-scale vaccination campaigns, but their numbers are expected to increase over the months.

In Asia, one of the biggest players in this sector is Zuellig Pharma, which has 85 warehouses where vaccines can be stored at ultra-low temperature and has a good distribution network.

Respecting the cold chain is essential, from the production of doses to their arrival in hospitals, including their transport to warehouses.

"We cannot administer vaccines that have been outside the cold chain," Tom Vanmolkot, vice president of the company, told AFP during a visit to the warehouse in Singapore. .

The city-state is one of the few countries in Asia to have started vaccinating.

The task promises to be particularly delicate in the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia where temperatures often exceed 30 degrees.

Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine should be stored at -70 degrees and then kept at 2-8 degrees for five days.

For its part, Moderna can be stored at -20 degrees and that of the Chinese company Sinovac between 2 and 8 degrees.

- Preserving the cold chain -

Zuellig Pharma, with regional headquarters in Singapore, has developed special boxes to transport vaccines and keep them cool.

They have a device that records the temperature and ensures that the "cold chain" has not been broken.

But the geography of some countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which are archipelagos, also complicates the distribution of vaccines.

These two nations have "thousands of islands and we need to make sure the vaccines get there," Vanmolkot said.

Unlike the distribution of other vaccines, which is done quickly, the vaccination against the new coronavirus will take months, he said.

Another difficulty for Zuellig Pharma to overcome is uncertainty.

No one is able to say at the moment when they will be approved by the authorities of the different countries or when they will arrive and in what quantities.

"So we are preparing for something big, which has to move fast - but we don't know exactly what those volumes are and at what temperatures," Vanmolkot said.

The Philippines, which has recorded half a million cases and 10,000 deaths since the start of the epidemic, has announced that it has already reached an agreement to purchase 25 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine from Chinese company Sinovac although the product has not received approval from regulatory authorities in China.

Indonesia, where the virus is progressing rapidly, began its vaccination campaign on January 13, with President Joko Widodo being the first to be vaccinated, followed by the Minister of Health and other senior politicians and religious and business leaders.

The Indonesian regulator has given the green light to CoronaVac, despite its relatively low efficiency rate, evaluated by Indonesian tests at 65.3%.

In total, the country, which has recorded nearly 25,000 deaths since the start of the epidemic, is awaiting nearly 330 million doses of vaccines, including more than 125 million Sinovacs.

The others will come from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinopharm.

But only a few million have been delivered so far.

© 2021 AFP