CAGS: Latin America-bound COVID vaccines likely to move through Miami Airport

Stakeholders at Miami International Airport (MIA) are preparing to leverage the hub’s geographic placement as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean and its strong position in pharma logistics to send COVID-19 vaccines south. [caption id="attachment_93358" align="alignright" width="450"] Panelists of session 2 at Cargo Airport Growth Summit. From upper left: Caryn Livingston, Air Cargo World; Andres Bianchi, LATAM Cargo; Donna Cook, FedEx Express; Jimmy Nares, Miami-Dade Aviation Department, Miami International Airport.[/caption] “Normally, 80% of our pharma exports go to the Latin America and Caribbean regions, so we do expect that we’re going to be a major hub for distribution of the vaccine going southbound,” said Jimmy Nares, section chief of aviation marketing for the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, during a panel discussion at Cargo Airport Growth Summit. View a recording of the panel discussion from Cargo Airport Growth Summit here. In anticipation of increased pharma demand, the airport created a planning task force to promote cooperation among the airport stakeholders, including airlines, cargo handlers and logistics companies with operations at MIA. Since the task force’s creation, airport stakeholders have been taking inventory of facilities available for vaccine storage and handling at MIA. The task force has considered "our refrigerated coolers and what temperature ranges they are able to maintain [and] how much pure space we have at the airport,” said Nares. “We started exploring things such as the use of dry ice, and whether we have adequate electrical facilities at our facilities for active containers.” Throughout the planning process, there has been a high degree of preparing for the unexpected and awaiting additional details. As Nares said, “up until recently, we thought that only one vaccine would be available, and that would have to be stored at -94 F or so.” With the recent announcements of promising results from pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna, more information has emerged that, while still requiring frozen storage, the temperatures are less extreme for one candidate. Pfizer’s vaccine needs to be maintained at a colder -70 C, while Moderna’s requires -20 C, according to the companies. LATAM Cargo, which operates between South America and MIA, is confident that based on current information about the vaccines, “the vast majority should be transported within what we call the ‘normal parameters’ of vaccine transportation, to the way active containers or passive or advanced passive,” said LATAM Cargo CEO Andres Bianchi during the panel. He estimated that “10% to 20% of them will probably have very different requirements or more stringent ones, but we’re very well-prepared to [transport] the standard ones” thanks to LATAM’s CEIV Pharma certification, he said. The airline has a “vast array of facilities” in South America for storage of perishables during transport, which can be repurposed, to an extent, for vaccine storage. The airline is also anticipating demand for vaccines with more stringent requirements based on the limited information currently available, said Bianchi. He stressed that successful industry execution of the task must look beyond the operations of only the airline involved to involve airports, customs officials and other stakeholders, considering the critical timeframe and necessary security involved in such crucial shipments. “I think the largest part of the effort is operating cohesively as an industry to make this as efficient, as effective, as diligent as possible,” said Bianchi. “Never have we had to handle such a sensitive cargo in terms of the visibility it’s going to have on how we operate as an industry. In this particular case, we cannot fail.”

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