DHL noted that Covid-19 has become the largest global health crisis in a century with governments, NGOs, and public authorities focusing on containing the virus, accelerating vaccination programs to keep populations safe, and ensuring that economies recover quickly.

Since the global vaccine campaign began in December 2020, DHL said it has delivered more than 1 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to more than 160 countries, playing a key role in the global vaccination roll-out.

“Looking back at the state of emergency these past nine months, we are honored to be playing our part, seamlessly managing and executing multiple supply chain set-ups without cold chain interruptions or security incidents,” said Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer DHL. 

“We are working across multiple supply chain set-ups and managing direct distributions in certain countries. We implemented new, dedicated, and reliable services at an accelerated speed to ship the highly temperature-sensitive vaccines, as well as ancillary supplies and test kits,” Busch added, noting that DHL will continue tapping into its cold chain infrastructure, resilient global network, and deep pharmaceutical logistics knowledge.

 The global vaccination campaign represents a crucial instrument in the fight against the virus, and it is essential for containing further virus variants, DHL said, adding that to reach high immunization levels, around 10 billion vaccine doses will be required worldwide by the end of 2021.

“Our advantage is that we already had a sophisticated network in place with the necessary healthcare expertise. This allowed us to react swiftly”, said Claudia Roa, President of Life Sciences & Healthcare at DHL Customer Solutions & Innovation.

“We ship the vaccines in special active thermal containers equipped with state-of-the-art GPS temperature trackers to ensure consistent temperatures and provide full transparency throughout the entire journey.”

DHL Global Forwarding and DHL Express have been tasked with transporting COVID-19 vaccines on multiple routes from Europe and other origins to countries across Asia Pacific, South America, and Europe. DHL Supply Chain is responsible for the proper storage and local distribution of the vaccines in several German states.