Traceability and Covid-19 vaccines: hope lies in logistics

Humanity is pinning much of its hopes for overcoming the covid-19 pandemic on science. Logistics will play a key role in the efficient distribution of vials and achieve end-to-end traceability in the pharmaceutical supply chain, enabling complete visibility in a critical chain.

A few months after the outbreak of the most important health crisis that the planet has experienced in the last century, several scientific teams from different parts of the world have managed to develop a promising group of vaccines that seek to put a stop to a pathogen that has put the world society in check.

However, this was only the first step in a process that will culminate in what will undoubtedly be the largest vaccination campaign in history.

With vaccines already developed , two new challenges are as crucial as scientific research.

• On the one hand, the pharmaceutical industry has a real touchstone to demonstrate its ability to manufacture a fundamental drug for a really large population in a really short period of time. In addition, the economic stability of most of the countries that, to a greater or lesser extent, have had to resort to measures of closure and confinement of their populations, in order to stop contagion, is at stake. These measures have negatively affected the global economy, which is awaiting signals against uncertainty to return to the reality that existed prior to March of last year.
• On the other hand, the global distribution of the vaccine is a major logistical challenge, both because of the conditions under which such sensitive goods must be handled and because of the security and capillarity required to ensure that the compounds reach the entire planet.

Difficulties in production put pressure on the supply chain

However, the demand for vaccines is much higher than the industry’s production capacity, given that vaccines are a highly specialized product, with highly rigorous quality and safety controls in their production and whose manufacture involves the use of advanced technologies that make these compounds unique goods.

Precisely production drip in vaccines puts further pressure on the vaccine supply chainwhich becomes a key point for avoid any risk in the most critical processes in the shelf life of any drug, such as transportation and storage..

In such an extraordinarily complex situation, technology provides essential support to manage the entire tactical deployment of supply chains that the entire planet is watching.

All of this implies the development of an appropriate traceability system to facilitate absolute control of the supply chain to gain efficiency in delivery and to be able to deal with any eventuality in real time, in order to avoid any delay in a product that is in short supply.

A control tower can be built around the traceability system from which to strategically manage a transport chain as critical as that of covid-19 vaccines.

The high specialization in pharmaceutical logistics

The pharmaceutical logistics segment has highly specialized companies with extensive experience in the treatment, storage and transportation of medicines for human use that require controlled temperature conditions, absence of sunlight or extreme fragility, among others.

Likewise, in the supply chain of medicines and medical devices, it is crucial to maintain extremely rigorous traceability. This ensures that the medicines arrive in the best possible condition at the points of administration and that the company is in a position to respond to specific variations in requirements.

In addition, the traceability of the supply chain for human medicines needs to be very deep, in order to provide visibility practically down to the unit, in an effort to achieve full transparency and end-to-end visibility.

In this way, health authorities can be provided with accurate information on any possible reactions that could be caused in vaccine recipients.

Visibility for when supply gains speed

In addition, supply seems to be gaining speed, once certain initial difficulties have been overcome.

In this regard, Spain plans to distribute 2,340,000 doses of the Moderna and Pfizer compounds throughout the country this February, to which the first deliveries of the AstraZeneca preparation will be added in the next few days, since the company has already received authorization from the European Union.

Ultimately, as vaccine production gains momentum and new companies join the manufacturing process, the delivery will have to absorb increasing volumes, which will require the parallel management of huge amounts of data that will have to be translated into information that will have to be channeled so that the vaccination campaign meets its objective.

FIELDEAS Track and Trace offers a comprehensive capability to trace the vaccine transport chain to the unit and meet the demanding needs of pharmaceutical logistics for efficient, transparent and agile distribution.

The tool offers end-to-end visibility in real time for all transportation and distribution processes, integrates information from all links in the chain to generate a global vision, allows for managing incidents and alarms in real time and works with unified information to facilitate rigorous and agile decision making.

Ultimately, managing supply chains to get covid-19 vaccines to everyone is a major element in overcoming the health crisis. Traceability tools channel the flow to make hope a reality as soon as possible.