February 26, 2021 – FedEx and UPS say they plan to increase distribution of the coronavirus vaccine by 40% next week, with peak distribution likely to come in May, The Hill reports.
Wes Wheeler, the head of UPS’s healthcare unit, said the courier service is currently handling about 10 million weekly doses but that the figure is set to increase to 14 million next week.
Additionally, if Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine secures emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that figure will increase further.
Wheeler said the company has bought freezer farms in both the Netherlands and Kentucky for vaccine storage, but so far distribution has been too rapid for them to be necessary. However, the money spent on the storage is unlikely to go to waste as the broader trend in drug manufacturing involves drugs that require cold storage, the company said.
“The shift from what we call small molecule to large molecule is accelerating very, very quickly,” Wheeler told Bloomberg. “The need for us to build out cold chain, freezer farms, cryogenic packaging centers around the world has been there since this market has really started to take off and the whole COVID pandemic has accelerated that.”