Govt mulls air freight stations for fast transportation of Covid-19 vaccine: Report

The race to find a coronavirus vaccine may have intensified, but the smooth distribution of the vaccine remains a cause of concern for many countries. India, with its enormous population, can face a humungous challenge while distributing the Covid-19 vaccine, and that is why the government is mulling regulatory changes to quicken the procedure of its transportation, according to a report by the Business Standard.

The government is planning to set up air freight stations (AFS), an off-airport common user facility that offers service for handling and temporary storage of import and export cargo, for direct movement of vaccines from pharmaceutical factories to the aircraft.

As per the plan, export and import clearances for cargo, including Customs activities will be provided at the AFS and it will be constructed near the sites of vaccine production. Other cross-border regulatory agencies such as the plant quarantine office and drug controller office will also be accommodated in the AFS.

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This move will help to reduce the dwell time, the time that a cargo consignment takes to leave the airport premises after obtaining all the Customs permits and security clearances. As per reports, in airports like Delhi and Mumbai, it takes more than 75 hours for a cargo consignment to get clearance whereas it is less than six hours in Singapore, Dubai, and Hong Kong airports.

“We are discussing if it is possible to move vaccines directly from the factory to the aircraft. We are also discussing the concept and procedure with security agencies like the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and Customs,” before adding that it is necessary for the vaccine to quickly reach to the aircraft from the manufacturing sites.

Also read — Aviation industry mulls steps to ensure smooth transportation of Covid-19 vaccines

The government is already planning to vaccinate a large population by mid-2021 and has formed a task force to carry out the operation. A sub-committee of this task force is focusing on building cold storage facilities and smooth transfers of vaccines from airports to vaccination centres. The Airports Authority of India’s (AAI’s) subsidiary AAI Cargo Logistics and Allied Services Company may be tasked with building the AFS if permitted by the government. The task force has also asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to ensure a faster approval process for overflight and landing permits for foreign freighter jets carrying vaccines.

But, executives of private airports are learnt to have opposed the move.

“Commercial business viability would be a challenge for airport operators as well as for AFS operators. Both will offer similar services, leading to work duplication, impacting the viability of airports that have invested in building cold chains,” an executive of a private airport told the publication.

Read: Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine could get UK approval this week

The chairman of Cargo Service Centre (CSC) Tushar Jani, which operates the cargo terminal at Mumbai airport, said the facility could handle eight 747 freighters daily. CSC has the capacity to handle 25,000 tonnes per month and is ordering 10 additional cool dollies.“We are ready to handle Covid-19 vaccine. Every day we handle 300 tonnes of pharma products, including 30-40 tonnes of vaccines,” he said

The distribution of vaccines like Pfizer, which needs to be stored at minus 70 degree Celsius and Moderna, which needs to be stored at minus 20 degree Celsius will be challenging in India for such storage facilities are scant in the country.

While the Covid-19 vaccines developed by the Indian companies are expected to have a storage requirement of 2-8 degree Celsius. “Most of the infrastructure here is geared to handle products in that temperature range,” Jani said.

SpiceJet, which is the only passenger airline to have freighter aircraft, is looking to set up cold chains and temperature-controlled warehouses. "We have developed sufficient capacity for transporting Covid-19 vaccines,” an airline spokesperson said.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Sunday that a locally-developed Covid-19 vaccine candidate could complete its final trials in a month or two, raising hopes for a rapid roll-out across the country.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Bharat Biotech this month started third-stage trials of Covaxin, in a process that would involve 26,000 volunteers. It is the most advanced Indian experimental vaccine.

The other experimental vaccines on trial in India are the one being developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University that is being manufactured by the Serum Institute of India; Russia's Sputnik-V; Zydus Cadila's ZyCoV-D and lastly one that Biological E Ltd is developing with Baylor College of Medicine and Dynavax Technologies Corp.