As the rollout of Covid vaccines gathers pace, the World Customs Organization (WCO) has joined forces with the International Civil Aviation Authority (Icao) to ensure the speedy and reliable distribution of the vaccines across borders in a manner that ensures the safety of the products and protects people from counterfeit medical products.
“The vaccines have differing storage and dosage requirements and other characteristics that will determine transport and packaging requirements from production centres to end users through the global supply chain,” says Icao secretary general Dr Fang Liu.
“Air cargo provides the speed and reliability that makes it the optimal means of transporting the vaccines and certain related goods over long distances.
“Besides, some of the large, infrastructural cargo commodities (eg, large medical freezers) necessary to expand the cold chain could call for multimodal transport resources,” Liu adds.
Icao and the WCO have called for open collaboration between the aviation and customs communities, those responsible for other transport modes, as well as other relevant stakeholders, in order to ensure safe, secure and efficient transport of vaccines and associated equipment across borders.
For easy reference the two organisations have produced and disseminated guidance and information that is publicly available on their websites.
“Through digitalisation and flexibility of the export, transit and import processes in air cargo operations, including robust risk management mechanisms, our organisations plan to significantly increase the speed at which vaccines can be delivered to the end user, while minimising the risk of distribution of unsafe and counterfeited medical products,” says WCO secretary general Dr Kunio Mikuriya.
Governments will however need to show maximum flexibility with respect to border clearance and transport operations, essential for the distribution of vaccines and related medical supplies, and the establishment of the infrastructure needed from provenance to the end users, he adds.
In order to expedite the movement of the vaccines, the organisations believe aviation staff should be designated as ‘key workers’ and therefore prioritised for vaccination.
They’ve also called for customs clearance of critical medicines and vaccines for export, transit and import to be prioritised in order to prevent possible detrimental product temperature variations due to delays.
Equally important is the introduction of appropriate measures to prevent organised criminal organisations from exploiting the situation, and to address the threat posed by illegal products in the cases of dangerous, substandard or counterfeit medicines and vaccines.
