India’s airliners, airports get ready for Operation Covid Vaccine Delivery

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN,

Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, November 21:

Indian airliners and airport operators have started preparing for the mammoth task of taking Covid vaccines across this sprawling country of 1.38 billion people.

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 million 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.Delhi Airport has two cargo terminals that can handle over 150,000 metric tonne (1 MT is 1,000 kg), and has “temperature-controlled zones with separate cool chambers ranging from +25°C to -20°C, which will be extremely conducive for distribution of Covid 19 vaccines,” said a spokesperson.”There are cool dollies at the airside that ensure unbroken cool chain during temperature-sensitive cargo movement between terminal and aircraft. The terminals have separate gates for fast movement of vehicles carrying vaccines in and out of the airport. Delhi Airport has set up a dedicated ‘transshipment excellence centre’ on airside that will help in fast movement of vaccines through transshipment,” he added.A Hyderabad airport spokesperson said the GMR Hyderabad Air Cargo (GHAC) is located in the epicentre of India’s vaccine production region. GHAC has India’s first pharma zone with certified temperature-controlled facility for handling temperature-sensitive cargo.

“The terminal is equipped with various temperature zones from -20 to +25 degrees Celsius … The freighter parking stands are just 50 metre away from the terminal, thereby minimising ramp exposure timing … we recently launched latest cool dollies — mobile refrigeration units for airside transportation designed to eliminate any temperature excursions and to maintain the unbroken cool chain,” he said.

The GHAC claims to have “one of India’s largest storage facility for cool containers … We are also upgrading infrastructure to double the capacity on both landside and airside to handle the upcoming surge in volumes,” he added.

A SpiceJet official official said: “SpiceXpress offers cargo shipment with controlled ambient temperature between +25 degrees Celsius to -40 degrees Celsius. The service is suitable for sensitive drugs, vaccines and blood samples. To suit the need of the cargo, containers can (be given) extra protection of thermal blankets if required. There are transit points with chillers to replace the gel packs and ensure real-time temperature monitoring with alarm system to ensure stability.”

The SpiceXpress’ cold chain management is synchronized with end to end logistics and that shipment of cargo is completely temperature controlled right from the warehouse to the aircraft hold area, he added.

The budget airline, which has operated over 10,000 flights carrying more than 80,000 tonnes of cargo from march 25 till date, says it has “sufficient capacity to cater to the rise in demand for the Covid-19 vaccine shipments. We have been transporting vaccine shipments to various international as well as domestic destinations. A lot of things that we carry like blood samples need a temperature-controlled environment and today we have that facility both in our planes and our ground support vehicles.”