Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating logistics problem here - distributing a vaccine that needs to be stored at -80C.

This is significantly colder than the standard cold logistics chain. I believe Pfizer are working on a special transport box that can, unpowered, stay at the right temperature for a week as long as the box is only opened for something like 1 minute a day.

That's a good thing, but with a capacity of I believe 10k vaccine doses, anywhere with fewer than 10k people to vaccinate, or anywhere that can't keep the demand level for the vaccine at the right level each hour/day as they progress through their vaccine stock, will have a hard time. This is going to disproportionately affect small communities and developing countries.

We've got hard logistical challenges ahead regardless of these details, but they make this even harder. Given this it's probably important that we continue to develop more vaccines and diversify our strategy for immunity.

Great video about this exact topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW1GExQB84

Skip to 3:20 if you don't want to hear a few minutes about why COVID is a big problem.

interesting... vid suggests that we have to use cryogenic techniques to store vaccine partly because there hasn't been enough time to test how they store at higher temperatures.

so perhaps the infrastructure requirements will relax as time goes on

Should be fine, insulated / liquid nitrogen containers are nothing new.

Would also expect there to be some kind of "drive in" vaccination points, like there are in some communities for tests.

You don't have to deliver the vaccine into every community. People can travel to nearest next place that has it.

This may be true for urban/suburban US/Europe/China/India, but this is not true for large parts of the world.

There are parts of rural US/Australia for example where despite people having cars, they may need to take a plane to get to a vaccine treatment centre with enough density to get stock. They may not be able to afford that travel even if the vaccine is free.

Much of the African population is spread over small communities where roads may not be reliable, let alone car access. If your minimum distributable unit is 10k vaccines, as it looks like it could be to begin with, that rules out a significant number of the population.

There are still other vaccines in testing that will be more suitable for those parts of the world.

Yes and that's a good thing. I think it's still important to recognise that not everyone is as privileged as many of us here, and that an inclusive approach to distribution will be important for this vaccine.

Viruses also, naturally, take longer to reach harder to reach areas. Basically, if the vaccine will have trouble reaching a community, the virus will, too.

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