Airlines & airports get ready for ‘Operation Covid Vaccine’

NEW DELHI: Indian airlines and airport operators have started preparing for the mammoth task of taking Covid vaccines across the country. While meeting Pfizer’s minus 70 degrees Celsius requirement for its vaccines will be “difficult”, they are gearing up to set up cold chain storage for the jab job that needs to be done on an unprecedented scale of several crore shots to even begin with.
The GMR Group, which operates Delhi and Hyderabad airports, says the air cargo units of both these places are getting ready to “play a pivotal role in the distribution of vaccines through state of the art time and temperature-sensitive distribution system” with cool chambers ranging from +25°C to -20°C. Budget carrier SpiceJet’s cargo arm, SpiceXpress, has tied up with global cold chain solution providers to perform seamless cold chain operations and offers cargo shipment with controlled ambient temperature between +25 degrees Celsius to -40 degrees Celsius.
Many other airports and airlines are also learnt to be preparing for vaccine transportation — possibly the largest ever air cargo opportunity so far, — comments from them were awaited till the time of going to press.