1 billion doses of the covid-19 vaccine have been shipped to more than 160 countries in the fight against COVID-19 since December 2020
COVID-19 has become the largest global health crisis in a century. Governments, NGOs, and public authorities have not only focused on containing the virus. They’re also accelerating vaccination programs to keep populations safe, and ensuring that economies recover quickly. Since the global vaccine campaign began in December 2020, DHL has safely delivered more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to more than 160 countries. We’re playing a key role in the global vaccination roll-out.
DHL Express makes major contribution to covid-19 vaccine distribution
“Looking back at the state of emergency these past nine months, we are honored to be playing our part, seamlessly managing and executing multiple supply chain set-ups without cold chain interruptions or security incidents. We are working across multiple supply chain set-ups and managing direct distributions in certain countries. We implemented new, dedicated, and reliable services at an accelerated speed. This to ship the highly temperature-sensitive vaccines, as well as ancillary supplies and test kits. In line with our purpose of ‘Connecting people, Improving Lives Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer DHL says:
We will continue tapping into our cold chain infrastructure, resilient global network, and deep pharmaceutical logistics knowledge and experience of our people
The importance of the global vaccination campaign
The global vaccination campaign represents a crucial instrument in the fight against the virus, and it is essential for containing further virus variants. To reach high immunization levels, around 10 billion vaccine doses will be required worldwide by the end of 2021. The global distribution of these doses is necessary to ensure that as many people as possible have access to vaccines. Besides managing various and complex supply chain set-ups, the sensitive temperature requirements have been a major challenge for logistics experts.
Why DHL Express was so quick to respond
“Our advantage is that we already had a sophisticated network in place with the necessary healthcare expertise. This allowed us to react swiftly”, explains Claudia Roa, President of Life Sciences & Healthcare at DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation. “We ship the vaccines in special active thermal containers equipped with state-of-the-art GPS temperature trackers. This way we ensure consistent temperatures and provide full transparency throughout the entire journey.”
DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Express have been tasked with transporting the COVID-19 vaccine on multiple routes. We do this from Europe and other origins to countries across Asia Pacific, South America, and Europe. DHL Supply Chain is responsible for the proper storage and local distribution of the vaccines in several German states.
“Making a meaningful difference is what drives us. We are proud of our contribution to the enormous task of delivering COVID-19 vaccines and related critical medical supplies to the right place at the right time, worldwide. The current COVID-19 situation clearly demonstrates how collaboration across governments and NGOs, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, and logistics companies is the only way to beat pandemics, both now and in the future.”
Thomas Ellmann, Vice President of Life Sciences & Healthcare, DHL Customer Solutions & Innovatio
Essential preparation for the future
As outlined in DHL’s white paper “Revisiting Pandemic Resilience”, the logistics infrastructure and capacity built up for the pandemic should be maintained because another 7-9 billion vaccine doses will be needed annually in the coming years to keep (re-)infection rates low and to slow down the pace of virus mutations – not counting seasonal fluctuations.
To be prepared for the future, it is essential to identify and prevent health crises early through, not only active partnerships. But also expanded global warning system, an integrated epidemic prevention plan, and targeted R&D investments. DHL also recommends expanding and institutionalizing virus containment and countermeasures (e.g., digital contact tracing and national stockpiles). This to ensure strategic preparedness and more efficient response times. To facilitate a speedy roll-out of medication (i.e., diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines), governments and industries should maintain “ever-warm” manufacturing capacity, blueprint research, production, and procurement plans, and expand local deployment capabilities.
Our Belgian colleagues play a crucial role in covid-19 vaccine distribution
DHL Express Belgium has played a crucial role in vaccine logistics. That’s why we asked Dina Leemans and Erik Testelmans for a reaction:
If we convert the heavy workload , complexity of the project and sometimes countless hours into something positive, I would use the words of one of our European colleagues. As it perfectly translates what we do every day to bring the vaccines perfectly to their destination…
“If we would make a movie about vaccines and logistics, what would we see behind the scenes? I’d say a robust and dedicated project team (customer ops, sales, HUBs and gateways, etc…). They are in daily contact with the customer and adjusts constantly to changing forecast and plans. Many staff in operations who give their utmost every day to load the vaccines properly and safely to ensure full connectivity in HUBS and gateways and lots of couriers who perform successful final mile delivery.
We would see QCC staff who monitor all data meticulously, pro-actively reach out to operations to avoid issues from happening and show we’re in full control. We would see the control tower keeping the customer updated and informed at any given time…It would be a great movie, one to be very proud of. And the result of all that work behind the scenes is still fabulous: 99%+ on-time performance and 100% Quality = zero rejections.”
