drones

The first deliveries of anti-Covid vaccines on board drones in the United States will start in June: these will be ‘flights’ experimental with the aim of reaching the most remote corners of the country where citizens have difficulty in going to doctors or hospitals. These include, for example, workers on oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

The first ‘top-down’ deliveries of vaccines will be implemented by drone company Draganfly, in partnership with Coldchain Technology Services: its drones will bring the immunization vials to Texas.

Coldchain has already developed thermal containers in the shape of cubes about a foot long; the temperature-controlled boxes can hold between 600-1,500 vials, depending on how they are stored by manufacturers. The cubes were built to maintain very low temperatures sufficient to safely store Pfizer’s vaccines for 48 hours and Moderna’s for 72 hours.

The second company authorized to use drones to transport medical supplies is San Francisco-based Volansi, which has already transported Merck’s medicines to North Carolina in since last October, but has not yet experimented with transporting vaccines. “Our containers,” however, recently said the administrator, Hannan Parvizian, “are also designed to transport anti-covid vaccines2.

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