Coronavirus: a new flight will go to Russia to bring another batch of Sputnik V vaccines

An Aerolineas Argentinas flight will leave for the Russian Federation on Sunday in search of a new batch of Sputnik V vaccine, official sources confirmed on Saturday.

Flight AR1602 will depart from Ezeiza International Airport non-stop for Sheremetyevo Airport in the Russian capital, at a time to be determined. The crossing, which will last between 3 and 5 pm, will be in charge of 10 crew members, including pilots and co-pilots – four on duty and one for backup – dispatchers, technicians and cargo personnel.

The plane will fly over Uruguay and Brazil, cross the Atlantic Ocean and pass over Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus and Russia.

About the vaccine load

The process of loading this third flight at Sheremetyevo airport will take about five hours, and after this task, the plane will immediately take off to Argentina.

On this occasion, the quantity of doses to be brought “will depend on the volume of the vaccine containers”, the sources indicated.

There are three different ways to bring them: with the Thermobox, as was done on the first two trips; in refrigerated boxes or containers; in all cases at 18 degrees below zero and with 60 hours of autonomy.

With the first method, about 600,000 vaccines can enter per flight, the boxes have more volume and therefore less quantity, and the refrigerated containers contain less volume and more quantity.

“Depending on the container used, the quantity of vaccines will be known,” the sources indicated and specified that it will depend on those used by the companies DHL and Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, in charge of packaging.

The Airbus 330-200 will fly under the name “ferry”, that is, when the aircraft is traveling empty, only with its cabin crew and even maintenance and freight technicians, as the case may be.

A “ferry” flight can be used to perform humanitarian transfers, repatriation of citizens, change from one airport to another to complete an itinerary by hijacking the plane, compensate for cancellations, return to the owner of the plane or, as in this case, search for a specific load.

Antecedents

This will be the third trip that Aerolineas Argentinas will make to Moscow, after the one made on December 24 to deliver the first 300,000 vaccines of the first dose; and the one completed last Saturday to transport the 300,000 units of the second dose.

The national government signed a contract with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (FRID) for four million for Dose 1 and one million for Dose 2 to arrive before the end of January; in addition to a deal of 14.7 million euros for February.

The executive also has an agreement with the AstraZeneca laboratory, which develops the vaccine at the University of Oxford, for the supply of 22 million doses.

And nine million doses have been secured by Covax, a global mechanism for purchasing vaccines from the World Health Organization (WHO).

Once in Argentina, the transport company Andreani will install the preservatives and the Argentinian Mail will distribute the vaccines by refrigerated trucks.