Travel restrictions challenge vaccine rollout, airlines warn

Paris, November 16

Air cargo operators could battle to distribute new COVID-19 vaccines successfully except pandemic journey restrictions are eased, world airways cautioned on Monday.

The warning got here in vaccine transport pointers issued by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which is pushing governments to interchange journey curbs and quarantines with testing.

“If borders remain closed, travel curtailed, fleets grounded and employees furloughed, the capacity to deliver life-saving vaccines will be very much compromised,” the IATA doc stated.

Moderna Inc stated on Monday its experimental COVID-19 vaccine had proved 94.5 per cent efficient in a scientific trial, per week after rival drugmaker Pfizer reported 90 per cent efficacy findings for its vaccine. Once authorised, each vaccines are more likely to require transport and storage effectively beneath freezing, posing logistical hurdles.

Widespread grounding of passenger flights that usually carry 45 per cent of worldwide cargo of their holds has taken out capability, thinning the air freight community and driving up costs.

Existing immunisation campaigns have struggled with the partial shutdown. The World Health Organisation and UNICEF “have already reported severe difficulties in maintaining their planned vaccine programmes during the COVID-19 crisis due, in part, to limited air connectivity,” IATA stated.

Vaccines will have to be shipped to creating international locations reliant on passenger providers for cargo, IATA’s head of cargo Glyn Hughes informed Reuters. Even in industrialised states, vaccine dispersal could also be a tighter bottleneck than manufacturing, requiring shipments to secondary airports on passenger jets.

In preparation for the problem of mass vaccine distribution, governments ought to transfer to reopen key passenger routes backed by strong testing, the airline physique argues.

“There are several more months for governments to go through the planning cycle,” Hughes stated, leaving sufficient time to “get passenger networks safely resumed, looking at safe travel corridors (and) mutual acceptance of testing procedures.”  — Reuters