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Q&A: MIT Operations Researcher Talks COVID-19 Vaccination Hurdles

An expert discusses some of the environmental, research, and packaging concerns in supplying populations with a COVID-19 vaccine.

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Around the world, scientists and citizens alike are hoping for a COVID-19 vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci is “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine within a reasonable period of time, not only from Moderna, but from other companies too.”

Healthcare Packaging spoke with MIT’s Dr. David Simchi-Levi, an operations research scientist who has thought through some of the challenges of preparing for the rollout of a vaccine. His research currently focuses on developing and implementing efficient techniques for logistics and manufacturing systems.  

HCP: What do you feel is that first hurdle that people are overlooking in distributing an effective vaccine?

MIT’s Dr. David Simchi-LeviMIT’s Dr. David Simchi-Levi

Dr. David Simchi-Levi: The vaccine  rollout has many different challenges. I’ll start with some of the observations about the vaccine development. Part of the challenge is making sure that we focus on the safety of the vaccine itself in providing long-term protection for all the people. There are several technologies considered for the vaccine.  

When we talk about product, we don't know which one will be successful just yet and we don't have many examples where the scientific community has been successful in developing vaccines for infectious diseases in the last 100 years.

So which one will be successful? And once you develop one, it’s typically a sequential process. You start in the lab, you test on animals, then you test on people in several trials, then you create specialized manufacturing processes. It’s a very linear process that can take several years. The problem is that we don’t have time now, and we need to do many of these steps in parallel. And challenge number one is that we don’t know which technology will be successful so we don’t know which manufacturing process to invest in.

HCP: And with different manufacturing processes, there could be different supply chains?

DSL: Exactly. The Gates Foundation is now building or investing in the seven most promising technologies, because they don't know which one it will be. You may not use all of them because maybe only one of the technologies will be effective.

HCP: How does packaging come into play? 

DSL: The second challenge is that in order to use the vaccine effectively, you need to provide storage to make sure that the vaccine itself does not degrade. The entire process has to be controlled, just as with any drug. Vaccines are extremely sensitive. They lose effectiveness if stored at the wrong temperature. So packaging, distribution, and the temperature-controlled supply chain are a critical part of the challenge.

In addition, each dose, each unique vaccine requires all sorts of components that are low-cost, but we don't have the supply. We don't have the ability to produce a package for the product right now: vials, stoppers, needles, caps and so forth. Making sure that we have the inventory of specialized glass for vials domestically is a challenge. These components are produced mostly in China and in India. For example, there is only one company in North America able to produce needles in large scale.

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