PLS SHARE:

I'm trying to help solve for a potential problem & I'm going to crowdsource here as you've all been very helpful.

If a #COVID19 vaccine needs to be stored & transported in MASSIVE quantities at -80 C to immunize Canadians when its available, how will we do it?

Medical specimens get shipped in SMALL quantities by couriers using Styrofoam containers packed with dry ice.

There is a forecastable degradation of its temperature & shippers can determine the amount of dry ice needed by accounting for distance, etc. https://www.dryiceandgases.com/packaging-materials

Some agricultural goods such as semen must be stored & delivered at a similar super freeze temperatures to remain viable for use.

There appears to be a healthy market of packaging & shipment of such around the world & the containers look like this.

https://www.biologixlab.com/product/Dry-Shipper-Nitrogen-Semen-Tank.html

When they arrive on location, they are stored in super-freezers, usually as a standalone unit (or in walk-in freezer built into a facility).

https://www.arctiko-int.com/show/?q=8779 

Assume 1) the rest of the world knows this & needs these, & 2) Canada needs to store 74,000,000 vaccine kits.

The logistics industry may be operating at less than capacity but medical logistics firms may be much more taxed given the # of tests, remote specimen work that's been displaced in hospitals.

Is there enough capacity in the current chain to add these massive short term loads?

Super-freezer walk-in storage & proper warehouse storage does not exist to my knowledge to handle a MASSIVE amount of vaccine kits that may require upwards of 2Msf of free space dispatched proportionately with population across the country.

And who would build it in time?

If you build it quick (can you?) it may be obsolete by the summer assuming we're done immunizing the country.

A private entity(ies) would never be able to move the capital for this without public influx of funds, assuming the compressors, etc & people are actually available.

The short term fix for the biggest public health logistics challenge in Canadian history may depend on the biggest short-term, scale manufacture & deployment of mobile super freezer packaging & storage ever.

Millions of packages, tons of dry ice, incredible amounts of Nitrogen.

Its a daunting task esp when weighed against the clock. Each day lost against immunization is counted in lives.

What is the solution for all of this when every country in the world is chasing the same dragon? Its probably local, at least in personnel & good, quick manufacturing.

I am not in govt, but we are all trying to pitch in.

Can auto suppliers make these devices? Do we need to? I am trying to determine if we could & should. We want to & we will if we can.

Who will deliver them in this massive scale in short term? @CanadianArmy, @canadapostcorp?

Canada, get ready for the biggest, most important peacetime mobilization of the country's logistics intelligence & might in its history.

Like the first wave when we worked together on PPE, we'll all need to put on our thinking caps & do politics later.

Lives count on it.

/END