It is now six days since Margaret Keenan, who turns 91 this week, became the first person to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Since then, thousands more people have received the vaccine with those in the most vulnerable groups of the over-80s and some health and care staff receiving it first.
To date, about 70 hospital hubs across the UK have been carrying out the injections in what is the biggest ever vaccination programme in the history of the NHS. The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, enough to vaccinate 20 million people since each person must receive two doses, 800,000 of which have already been delivered. It is likely that four million doses of the jab will be delivered before the end of the year, rather than the planned ten million, after Pfizer reported manufacturing delays.
So, what are the logistics behind this massive programme? The vaccine’s journey starts in Pfizer’s factory in Puurs, Belgium, where it is manufactured under the toughest quality assurance checks. Vaccines are then packed and certified for release. They are transported in special storage containers or “shippers” developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, which keep the jabs at the required -70C temperature for the duration of the journey, using dry ice. Each shipper is fitted with a GPS thermal sensor, which tracks the temperature of the vaccines throughout the journey.
