DHL’s Plans for Proper Vaccine Distribution

DHL is important in the transportation of COVID-19 vaccines in Mexico. Last week, MBN reported that a DHL airplane arrived at Mexico City’s International Airport carrying 3,000 doses. The German company has developed a strategy for the transportation and handling of Pfizer’s vaccine against COVID-19. Antonio Arranz, CEO of DHL Express in Mexico, explained to T21 the holistic solution that the company plans to use in Mexico: Global Forwarding, Supply Chain and Express to fully meet the transportation, storage and follow-up needs of the different vaccines demand, such as ultra-freezing or regular cold storage.

“In Mexico alone, DHL Express will make use of many forces for this monumental task, 9,000 employees, more than 4,300 vehicles, five intercontinental flights and 16 national flights,” guaranteed the CEO to T21. The Mexican government has acquired more than 34 million Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, for a total of up to almost 200 million vaccines when combined with other developments (which MBN fully detailed in this article) which will be delivered from many places in the world. “We are still working to accelerate the import processes of two other vaccines: CanSino’s and AstraZeneca’s,” assured Martha Delgado, Deputy Minister for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Relations (SRE).

A strength DHL Express’s Mexican CEO sees in the company is its high capacity to reach remote areas in the country. “Granularity is the advantage we have with which we can aid in the creation of a solution,” he said. Arranz mentioned that DHL is still negotiating with other pharmaceutical companies to offer them the solutions DHL has designed in terms of transportation, based on their service DHL Medical Express (WMX).

Mexico has now become of the first 10 countries to approve the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use. “The explosive growth the vaccine’s demand will have in the next few weeks will test our manufacturing, storage, distribution and administration capacities,” said Lizete de la Torre, Director of Corporate Affairs for Mexico at Pfizer, reported T21. Pfizer worked on special thermic containers to move the vaccine in extremely cold conditions. Each container has chips and thermic sensors to keep proper monitoring of the temperature in the containers and the geolocation they have in real-time, to guarantee the quality of vaccine application programs, explained de la Torre.