Last-mile posing key vaccine challenge

“Overall, we have not seen enough foresight for how the ‘last mile’ will work,” Deutsche Post DHL chief executive Frank Appel told the Financial Times. “That is the key bottleneck — how do you get it to the patient?”

DHL is among the logistics companies contracted to deliver the BioNTech/Pfizer jab. It has revamped its forwarding facilities to handle dry ice and keep the product stable at about minus 70C during transport.

GPs find it difficult to manage dry ice, but Appel says more could have been done to build local infrastructure to help.

DHL says the vaccine effort will require logistics providers to increase capacity to deliver an expected 10bn vaccine doses worldwide over the next two years, involving 15,000 flights, 200,000 shipping pallets and 15m cooling boxes.