Ensuring reliable and efficient access to COVID-19 vaccines for everyone in Asia

The COVID-19 vaccines will require cold temperatures for storage to keep them stable and viable. The antigen, the component that provides the immunization, degrades quickly if not kept at a specific temperature.

A cold chain system in healthcare necessitates seamless end-to-end solutions that anticipate and moderate unique risks and challenges. These include ensuring uniformity of quality control, monitoring and a fleet of vehicles that bring the vaccine from the regional warehouse to the provincial or local distribution centers.

The end-to-end temperature control and other storage and handling factors could be a hurdle for low-income markets that do not have the required infrastructure to store and distribute to their population.

While most freight forwarders can deliver the vaccines to the airport warehouses or ports, they are not able to reach the point of care in the hospital, clinic or vaccination center.

Many patients are in rural areas with poor infrastructure that are hard to reach and this is where a key complexity of vaccine distribution lies. The ability to deliver the vaccines in a safe yet pragmatic manner, for example, on the back of a motorbike equipped with a specific top-box to get to villages in remote areas, will become a requirement. 

With millions of people to be inoculated, governments will need to manage the vaccination drive. Patients need to be told they are eligible for their vaccination and when and where they can get the shot. They need to be informed of which vaccine they will get and be able to communicate with their healthcare provider to ask questions and address any doubts.

A vaccination drive of the scale we have in front of us requires thorough systems and processes to be in place. Data needs to be stored and managed and it must of course all be automated and simple to manage.