The ice express

Get ready to give up your favourite ice cream and frozen desserts for a while. That would be the price you may have to pay for a Covid-19 vaccine.

While the whole world is breathlessly following every single development on the vaccine front, less noticed, though equally crucial, is the ecosystem needed to bring the vaccines from the lab to your arm. Ranging from the immediate requirement of crores of vials, syringes and needles to refrigeration, storage, transportation and delivery of the doses to every citizen, this health emergency is spawning a business potential that even early conservative estimates put at thousands of crores of rupees.

Storing and transporting the vaccine at the requisite temperature would be the most daunting task for India. One solution, as the head of a leading refrigeration company suggests, is drafting in “the cold storage facilities of the likes of Mother Dairy and Amul, and at all the supermarkets.”

The good news is that India already has a Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) in place, which could be used for vaccine delivery. And, the bad news? It is not equipped to handle a vaccination programme of this scale. “Planes, trucks, warehouses and health centres all will have to be outfitted with freezers for the required temperature along with power backups. It’s a gigantic task ahead!” said Balbirsingh Khalsa, national director (industrial & logistics) of the property consultant Knight Frank India.

If the government decides to administer the vaccine through the UIP (which is almost certain), the infrastructure will fall woefully short. UIP currently does around five crore vaccinations a year. “We may require seven to ten times more infrastructure and immediate investment if the government plans to cover the entire 1.3 to 1.4 billion population in 12 to 15 months,” said Khalsa. “Public and private partnerships will play an important role to manage this challenge.”

Simple arithmetic shows that for a double dosage vaccine, the requirement of vials, rubber stoppers, needles and syringes would be nearly 300 crore pieces each. “The storage and distribution of vaccines need to be strictly regulated and overseen as exposure to sunlight (or wrong temperature) can damage the chemical composition,” said Akshay Daftary, director of SIRO Clinpharm and part of the promoter family that owns Bharat Serums & Vaccines.

Cold chain facilities will be the most crucial requirement. Most of the vaccines in the final lap require refrigeration—Russia’s Sputnik V between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius to Moderna’s at -20 and Pfizer’s at -70. Of course, while the actual requirement will be known only when the government selects the vaccines, there is already a flurry of activity on the ground, with cold chain logistics providers and refrigeration players hitting the ground running.

“We started planning from June itself, discussing with vaccine manufacturers, state and central governments, pharmaceutical companies and logistics players who will be exporting,” said B. Thiagarajan, managing director of Bluestar, a leading player in the pharmaceutical refrigeration space. Orders have been pouring in from pharma and ancillary sectors from July itself, anticipating the vaccine rush. “Additional raw materials and components have already been ordered, and we have added additional shifts at our manufacturing plants from this month,” he said.

This cold chain will be required right across the value chain. The vaccines will need to be transported to storage facilities and from there over to various immunisation points. And at every step of this process, maintaining temperature with the right equipment will be crucial. The requirements range from walk-in coolers that can keep tens of thousands of vials at warehouses and government storage points (currently India has 224 of these), walk-in freezers that can maintain temperatures below -10 (57 of these are there), ice refrigerators (2 to 8 degrees; more than 44,000) and deep freezers (below -2; about 38,200). Additionally, a mix of format would have to be used, from solar refrigerators at places with no or erratic power supply (100), cold boxes (about 80,000), handheld vaccine carriers for last mile delivery (14.43 lakh) and vaccine vans (about 700). Currently, most of India’s infrastructure is equipped to store and move vaccines that need refrigeration of up to -25 degrees Celsius.

According to Thiagarajan, the refrigeration opportunity itself will depend on which vaccines are finally selected for India, and their storage requirement. “If the refrigeration requirement is 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, it is a business opportunity of Rs100 crore, while if it is -40 to -70 degrees Celsius, it might be worth up to Rs2,500 crore.”

That is just the refrigeration part. Cold chain players are suddenly the hottest ticket in the logistics industry, and leading players like Snowman and Gati Kausar are gearing up for the big business. “We are already managing vaccine distribution of influenza/swine flu and typhoid. This experience will come in handy while managing Covid-19 vaccine storage and distribution,” Snowman’s CEO Sunil Nair said in a recent interview. The company can handle seven crore doses and it is ramping up capacity, including setting aside 200 of its 300 refrigerated trucks for Covid-19 vaccine delivery.

Not that there aren’t long-term worries over this sudden ‘opportunity’. “The costs would be prohibitive unless the cold chain capacity can be used subsequently to enhance the much-needed upgrade for the agriculture and food cold chains,” said Anjani Mandal, CEO of Fortigo Networks and Logistics.

India being a major bulk manufacturer of drugs, vast quantities of vaccines will be manufactured for export as well. Global logistics biggies like Maersk, which does reefer container shipment, and Blue Dart, which is part of the DHL courier conglomerate, have all stepped up. “We have been a major logistics support for pharma majors by transporting Covid-19 samples, testing kits, medicines as well as other medical and pharmaceutical equipment. We have ramped up our infrastructure with our temperature controlled logistics (TCL) and have done our background work in terms of requirements,” said Ketan Kulkarni, chief marketing officer and head of business development at Blue Dart.

Singapore Airlines last month got QEP (quality enhancement plan) accreditation for its facilities in Mumbai and Bengaluru airports, which would allow the airline to transport Covid-19 vaccines in temperature-controlled containers in accordance with industry standards. “It is an important validation of our capabilities,” said Chin Yau Seng, senior vice president of cargo, Singapore Airlines. “Especially given the importance of getting pharmaceuticals, and eventually Covid-19 vaccines, safely and swiftly to customers during this pandemic.”