Self-flying drones help accelerate COVID-19 vaccines in Ghana

The threat of COVID-19 has prompted many countries to draft new and emerging technologies, the latest example to fly in Ghana. This month, COVID-19 vaccines were first delivered by drones to the West African nation, allowing the drug to be transported to far-flung areas from traditional logistics.

The delivery was made by US firm Zipline, which began blending blood and drugs in Rwanda in 2016. Since then, the company has expanded its operations to Ghana in 2019 and the US in 2020, delivering medical supplies and PPE to North Carolina last May. Now, the government of Ghana has tapped the zipline to distribute the first vaccines supplied to Africa. Through the COVAX initiative, a project was initiated with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO) to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are available to developing countries.

“Ghana was the first country to receive the Covax vaccine, because they had the strongest application, and because of which they had the strongest application, they could guarantee delivery of this vaccine at a lower cost to any healthcare facility or hospital in the country Can. And very high reliability, ”said Zepline CEO Keller Renado The Reporter Door.

Image: Zipline

Rinaudo, naturally, attributes Zipline’s presence in the country. Zipline operates four distribution centers in Ghana, each part part drone airport and part medical warehouse, with a fleet of 30 fixed-wing drones as well as a host of medical supplies. The planes autonomously fly to their destination, drop packages via parachute, and return home.

Zipline says that each distribution center can deliver in 22,500 km² Surrounding area (8,750 mi)²) Belongs to. Since 2019, the company has made more than 50,000 deliveries in Ghana, including more than 1 million vaccines, and claims that its services can reach 12 million people – just one third of the country’s total population. Zipline drones can deliver to hospitals, but also to temporary mobile clinics that will be used to deliver COVID-19 vaccines to more remote areas of the country.

Traditional logistics are still playing a major role in Ghana’s vaccination efforts (United Parcel Service distributes COVID-19 vaccines to Zipline’s delivery centers, for example), but Rinaudo says the epidemic has caused the zipline’s technology Have shown benefits, particularly as drones require minimal human interaction. “During the epidemic you had a lot of traditional models breaking down,” he says. “And the number of vaccines passing through our system increased by a factor of ten during the first two, three-week lockdown.”

The COVID-19 vaccines distributed by Zipline in Ghana are the Oxford-AstraZeneca variety, which, unlike some other alternatives, only require regular refrigeration at temperatures of 2 ° C to 8 ° C to maintain stability. This means that the zipline can transport vaccines using the insulation it already uses for blood and other vaccine types.

Image: Zipline

Rinaudo says the rapid nature of drone delivery helps with the challenges posed by “cold chain logistics”. He says that there is no need to worry about traffic delays in the sky, and drones, which travel at 100 km / h, take an average of only 30 to 40 minutes to complete each delivery. This means that passive, rather than active refrigeration, is all that is needed to keep vaccines at the desired temperature. “Think ice box not refrigerator,” he says.

Upon arriving at their destination, Riondo states that vaccines “go straight into a refrigerator or into someone’s hand.” Zipline received its first batch of vaccines last Tuesday, which led to 36 deliveries and distributed 4,500 doses in a single day in the Ashanti region of Ghana. As of Thursday, the company said it had “distributed almost all of the 11,000 COVAX doses”. This is a solid start, although it represents only a small proportion of the 600,000 total dosages. Shipped to Ghana in February By COVAX. However, in the coming 12 months, Zipline says it plans to distribute some 2.5 million doses across Ghana.

In addition to immediate benefits to recipients, rapid and equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide remains an issue of global importance. I am writing Guardian Last month, President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame said that if vaccination programs cover only rich countries, new mutations of the virus that cause COVID-19 will continue to emerge at a more rapid pace “in developing countries”. “Epidemic will cripple the global economy” “In this context, it would cost billions of dollars to distribute vaccines in developing countries, not particularly high ones, given the return on investment.”

And while the drones themselves certainly can’t solve all the challenges associated with delivering medical treatment to remote areas, Rinado says the work of Zipline suggests they can certainly be part of a larger solution. . He says, “When it comes to healthcare it is usually people who can access this service.”