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DHL delivers 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses

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DHL has shipped 1 billion vaccine doses throughout 160 countries since December 2020.

COVID-19 has become one of the largest global health crisis’ of the modern era.

Governments, NGOs, and public authorities have focused on containing the virus, accelerating vaccination programs to keep populations safe, and help economies recover quickly.

Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer DHL says the company is honoured to play a significant role in this intervention, managing and executing multiple supply chain set-ups without cold chain interruptions or security incidents.

“We are working across multiple supply chain set-ups and managing direct distributions in certain countries,” Katja says.

“We implemented new, dedicated, and reliable services at an accelerated speed to ship the highly temperature-sensitive vaccines, as well as ancillary supplies and test kits. We will continue tapping into our cold chain infrastructure, resilient global network, and deep pharmaceutical logistics knowledge and experience of our people.”

To reach high immunisation levels, around 10 billion vaccine doses will be required worldwide by the end of 2021.

The global distribution of these doses is necessary to ensure that as many people as possible have access to vaccines. Besides managing various and complex supply chain set-ups, the sensitive temperature requirements have been a major challenge for logistics experts.

Claudia Roa, President of Life Sciences & Healthcare at DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation says DHL’s network of healthcare expertise was a major advantage in the vaccine rollout program.

“We ship the vaccines in special active thermal containers equipped with state-of-the-art GPS temperature trackers to ensure consistent temperatures and provide full transparency throughout the entire journey,” Claudia says.

DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Express have been tasked with transporting COVID-19 vaccines on multiple routes from Europe and other origins to countries across Asia Pacific, South America, and Europe.

The company says the logistics infrastructure and capacity built up for the pandemic should be maintained because another 7-9 billion vaccine doses will be needed annually in the coming years.

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