China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) and EVA Airways Corp (長榮航空) yesterday said that they are ready and willing to transport COVID-19 vaccines, although they had not received assignments from the government.
The airlines’ remarks came after a report by the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) said that the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) had asked EVA to install liquid nitrogen storage to facilitate carrying vaccines developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, which must be kept at about minus-75°C.
EVA said that it did not receive an assignment from the CECC, but it has told the Civil Aeronautics Administration that it would be happy to provide a door-to-door vaccine delivery service.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We are confident that we can handle Pfizer’s ultra-cold vaccines with our cold-chain delivery service,” EVA said in a statement.
Although EVA has not previously shipped goods kept at such a low temperature, such an assignment would be doable with ultra-cold freezers or dry ice, it said, adding that it has many years of experience shipping flu vaccines.
EVA, which has five Boeing Co 777 cargo aircraft and has ordered three new 777F cargo aircraft, said that it could use its passenger jets’ cabins to ship vaccines if necessary.
Several freight forwarders have approached CAL to discuss transportation of vaccines and the negotiations are still ongoing, it said in a statement.
CAL has not received an assignment from the government, but it is confident about its temperature-controlled delivery service launched in 2013, the airline said.
CAL said that it is the only Taiwanese carrier to have been awarded Center of Excellence for Independent Validators certification from the International Air Transport Association.
Whether the two airlines are capable of transporting COVID-19 vaccines has been in the spotlight, as some Taiwanese biotech firms are also working on vaccines after products developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Inc showed high effectiveness.
The CECC has not assigned deliveries to EVA, as it is still in the process of purchasing vaccines through the COVAX global vaccine alliance, Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥), the CECC’s spokesman, told a news conference in Taipei earlier yesterday.
It might be the foreign vaccine makers that decide which airlines are to transport their products, with specific requirements for storage and logistics, not the CECC, Chuang said.
As transporting COVID-19 vaccines takes special care and equipment, the government might prefer to let the vaccine makers handle distribution, even if the costs are higher, a market analyst said by telephone.
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