Designated as’SK Bioscience’ for domestic distribution of corona vaccine

The quarantine authorities signed a contract with SK Bioscience as a company that will be in charge of the distribution of the domestic Corona 19 vaccine. Along with the vaccines contracted with AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Pfizer, it will also digest the volume coming from Kovacs.

On the 22nd, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the establishment and progress of a storage and distribution system to transport the Corona 19 vaccine to the inoculation institution.

Corona 19 vaccines have different storage and distribution conditions for each manufacturer, and various vaccination locations for each vaccine. To this end, a thorough storage system must be established from the arrival of the vaccine to the vaccination.

To this end, SK Bioscience builds a customized cold chain system for each vaccine to monitor temperature maintenance and delivery route in real time during vaccine transportation. Here, M2Cloud will participate as a partner to build an integrated control center based on the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is in charge of distribution of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Cobax Fascilli vaccines that will be sequentially entering Korea from the beginning of next month.

SK Bioscience also operates a freezing and refrigeration center with a cooperation system with domestic logistics companies to prepare for the uncertainty in the vaccine supply timing and the liquidity of the vaccine supply. Gtree B&T and Dongwon I-Farm participate as partners in the vaccine distribution.

Along with this, the Agency for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it will start a full-fledged installation of a’cryogenic freezer’ for Pfizer vaccines that require cryogenic storage.

The Pfizer vaccine will enter Korea as early as early February. It is known that out of the 10 million people introduced by the government through Kovacs, the initial quantity of 50,000 people has been decided as a Pfizer product.

Pfizer and other mRNA (ribonucleic acid) vaccines are only vaccinated at 250 vaccination centers nationwide. The vaccination center should install a cryogenic freezer to maintain the vaccine storage conditions and perform vaccination within the expiration date of the product.

The disease administration provides government subsidies so that each local government can install freezers through three companies registered in the Nara Marketplace shopping mall, including Daehan Science, Ilshin Biobase, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

“The establishment of a thorough distribution management system of vaccines is the most important task for safe vaccination, so we will prepare carefully and without disruption until vaccination is administered,” said Chung Eun-kyung, director of the Korea Disease Administration.

On the other hand, looking at the timing of vaccine introduction by pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca is expected to enter in stages from February to March, Janssen and Moderna in 2Q, NovaVax in May, and Pfizer in 3Q. The total pre-purchase amount is 76 million people.