AMS may see 20% of Europe’s COVID vaccines

[caption id="attachment_77494" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo courtesy of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.[/caption] Up to 20% of the COVID-19 vaccines moving within Europe by air may pass through Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS), according to Ferry van der Ent, director of business development at Schiphol Cargo. Although it’s unclear how many vaccines will move by air across Europe, where trucking is the primary method of cargo transport, vaccine shipments could reflect typical load mix percentages. “In Europe, 95% of all air cargo is being transported by truck, although it is air cargo, only 5% is being flown,” van der Ent said. Van der Ent’s 20% estimate is a culmination of several variables, including the production capacity of vaccine manufacturers in the EU — where the initial shipments of the vaccines bound for Europe are being produced — and the total number of vaccines ordered by EU member states. “We have taken into account the total capacity of manufacturers in Europe,” said van der Ent, adding that this capacity less the total number of EU orders will be the number of vaccines available for export. Van der Ent then took into account the market share of Pfizer vaccines in order to determine how many dry ice shipments and room temperature shipments would be necessary. Based on those numbers, he calculated how many full freighters and how much belly capacity would be required to supply EU members with the vaccines they have ordered. Finally, van der Ent examined the market shares of Europe’s top ten cargo airports, including AMS, ultimately estimating that the airport would see between 15%-20% of the vaccines to be distributed throughout Europe. However, the total number of vaccines that will move throughout Europe is still unknown. The figures are “changing on a daily basis,” he said. AMS has not yet been informed by either Pfizer or Moderna — the two pharma companies whose vaccines have been approved for distribution in Europe — how many vaccines the airport will receive, although AMS knows the number of vaccines the pharma companies can produce weekly, according to van der Ent, who used that number for his calculations. Once the vaccines arrive at AMS, they will be given priority status over all other cargo, thanks to the “vaccine fast lanes” introduced as part of Vaccine Gateway Netherlands, a task force of sixty industry stakeholders headquartered at AMS. Its mission is to ensure the “safe, secure, and swift transportation of the COVID-19 vaccines from manufacturer to end-user” according to a December press release. Vaccine shipments will be assigned unique codes indicating their status to customs and handlers. “Because we think the vaccine is so important, it should be continuously moving,” said van der Ent. As a precaution, AMS also has backup plans in place allowing vaccine shipments to be offloaded from planes directly onto trucks “under the wings of the aircraft,” according to van der Ent. “But we hope to avoid that,” he added. Looking ahead, the airport may also serve as a gateway through which vaccines depart Europe for the rest of the world. “It might be the case that, after a few months, we are not having outbound shipments, but also inbound shipments” from countries like India, van der Ent said. He expects India will likely become a major producer of vaccines by the third quarter of 2021. “It might also be the case — as we saw with PPE material in April or May of this year — that Schiphol is being used as a transfer airport,” said van der Ent. “We have a lot of PPE materials coming in from China and, via Schiphol, their final destination was in South America. It could be the case that that will be happening with vaccines as well.”

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