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TUTTLINGEN, Germany (AP) – Huge gray boxes roll off the production line at a factory in the southern city of Tuttlingen, ready to be shipped to the front lines in the next phase of Germany’s battle against the then coronavirus that it became the last country to pass the milestone of one million confirmed cases Friday.
Human-sized freezers such as those made by family-owned Binder GmbH could become a key part of the large vaccination program the German government is set to roll out when the first vaccines become available next month.
This is because one of the pioneers, a vaccine manufactured by the German company BioNTech with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, should be cooled to minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) for shipping and storage.
Ensuring such temperatures, even colder than an Antarctic winter, is just one of the many challenges countries face in trying to get their populations vaccinated.
The effort has been compared to a military operation. Indeed, some countries, including Germany, rely on military and civilian expertise to ensure that valuable doses are transported safely from manufacturing plants to covert storage facilities, before being distributed.
Germany has benefited from the market power that comes with its membership of the European Union. The 27-country bloc’s Executive Commission – headed by former German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen – has been negotiating with vaccine makers, ordering more than a billion doses so far.
German officials have said the country hopes to achieve up to 300 million doses thanks to EU orders and bilateral deals with three manufacturers in Germany, including BioNTech and CureVac, a Tuebingen-based company that claims its vaccine can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures for up to three months. However, its trials are not as advanced as Pfizer / BioNTech and others.
The figure of 300 million depends on the marketing of all vaccines under development. That would be more than enough to immunize the German population of 83 million, even if two vaccines are needed, as seems likely.
The exact way the vaccine is given to patients differs from country to country. In Germany, the federal government has delegated the task to its 16 states, which are currently working on building large vaccination centers.
The city-state of Berlin wrote to Albrecht Broemme, a veteran of disaster management. The former Berlin fire chief went on to lead the German federal civil protection organization THW, where he helped organize relief operations for floods, storms and earthquakes around the world.
The 67-year-old is now coordinating the establishment of six vaccination centers in Berlin at a convention center, two former airports, an ice rink, a concert hall and an indoor cycle path.
Authorities want them to be ready by mid-December to start vaccinating more than 3,000 people a day at each site. With just a few minutes to deliver each photo, and keen to keep the number of people in each center to a minimum, Broemme and his colleagues design a one-way flow system similar to that found in department stores like the Ikea furniture.
Each site will be managed by a medical aid group, such as the Red Cross, with volunteers to help register and guide people through the site.
As elsewhere, the first phase of immunization in Berlin is likely to focus on immunizing health workers and vulnerable groups such as the elderly and those with chronic illnesses.
About 20,000 people in the capital will be vaccinated each day, returning after three weeks for a booster.
Demand is likely to exceed supply at first, but a spokesperson for German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to say whether she would seek priority access for her cabinet.
“The German government and its members will follow what the relevant experts deem reasonable,” Steffen Seibert told reporters.
Merkel herself told parliament on Thursday that she hoped regulators would approve the first vaccines “very quickly”.
“It won’t fix the problem immediately, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she told lawmakers.
Broemme said he expects four-fifths of the vaccines initially available to require ultra-low cooling. This means that each center will need a pharmacy that handles both the storage and thawing of vaccines.
Across the country, in Tuttlingen, Binder GmbH, one of the city’s hundreds of medical device manufacturers, some dating back to the 19th century, is seeing demand for its freezers increase.
Priced at $ 13,000 to $ 15,000 ($ 15,500 to $ 17,900), each device can keep tens of thousands of vaccine vials at optimum temperature, says Peter Wimmer, the company’s chief innovation officer.
“It’s plug and play,” he told the AP. “All you need is an electrical outlet, turn it on and the device is ready to go.”
Having the entire immunization system up and running at the push of a button is another matter.
It is still unclear who will actually administer the vaccines in Berlin. Unlike Great Britain, which has a centralized national health service organizing the vaccination campaign, Germany relies on medical associations to provide the necessary medical personnel.
Doerthe Arnold, spokesperson for the Berlin branch of the German Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, said they are still waiting for the state government to provide details on what will be required of doctors.
“Despite positive feedback from medical practitioners that they are ready to help even more, providing medical staff for the six vaccination centers will be a challenge,” she said.
The limits of medical logistics were tested in the spring, amid the huge global demand for ventilators, therapeutic drugs, face masks and other protective gear have caused bidding wars, bottlenecks and reports of defective products.
Global logistics company DHL estimates that providing global vaccine coverage over the next two years may require 15,000 flights.
“The challenge is the number of doses and the fact that you don’t know which vaccine should go where,” said Sabine Hartmann, a DHL spokesperson. “It’s not something a single company can do on its own. All logistics companies must work together. “
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Jordans reported from Berlin.
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Follow AP coverage of the viral outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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