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COVID-19 vaccines pose new transportation challenges. Canadian innovators are stepping up

Oct 6, 2021 , , , , by shlf

OTTAWA —One week. Two vaccines heralding promise. Maybe three more months before COVID-19 vaccine jabs could start being delivered to somewhere in Canada.

Canada took another step toward that milestone Monday when the federal government announced the names of four main bidders who have been selected to compete for the contracts to deliver a vaccine or vaccines — once approved by Health Canada — to Canadians.

On Monday, the Canadian military also flagged that it is now on standby to help.

And meanwhile, just as happened in the spring, Canadian companies and innovators with outside-the-box solutions are stepping up to offer to help in Ottawa’s looming dilemma of how to store, transport and distribute potentially more than 70 million vaccine doses that have unique cold storage requirements.

The two front-runner vaccine candidates that have reported promising early results are developed by Pfizer and Moderna.

Pfizer’s potential vaccine needs “ultracold” storage at -80C. Moderna’s requires -20 C for long-term shipping and storage but remains stable at 2 C to 8 C, the temperature of a standard home or medical refrigerator, for up to 30 days. Moderna says that allows for storage at most pharmacies, hospitals or physicians’ offices. Once the vaccine is removed from the refrigerator for administration, the company says it can be kept at room temperature conditions for up to 12 hours.

Flavio Volpe, head of Canada’s auto supply manufacturers association, quietly cast around last week for creative solutions to the “ultracold” freezer puzzle. Then he went public, posting on Twitter that he was trying to crowdsource ideas for Ottawa’s decision-makers. He’d done the same thing last spring when a shortage of personal protective equipment and ventilators became apparent in the first wave.

“In the end, we may not be able to help here, but if we can help people get a vaccine within a month, two months, 10 months or more before things would happen naturally, why wouldn’t we?” Volpe said in an interview. “We all have a stake in getting things back to normal.”

Almost immediately, his call was answered.

Texts and emails landed from a range of companies: auto suppliers that make specialized Styrofoam that could be used for dry-ice containers; companies that already make high-grade Styrofoam containers for the delicate shipping of organs for transplant; companies that manage the shipping and transport of frozen agricultural products like bull semen; and companies that make compressors and condensers, and are investigating whether they can be upgraded and adapted.

Jim Estill of Danby Appliances tweeted back his company is making -80 C freezers. “How many do you want?” he asked.

Reached Monday, Estill said his company is about to roll out a new ultracold freezer, developed in the past 90 days, that will cost an estimated $10,000 apiece.

Estill is talking to the companies aiming to lead the distribution effort. “None of them make freezers. We make freezers. So they need freezers — that’s the bottom line.

“What we don’t know yet is how they’re planning on distributing it,” said Estill. “Are they going to put everything in Toronto and then shoot it out to London from there or are they going to put one in every hospital, one in every pharmacy?

“The logistics of getting everything around, this is going to be the next crisis, to get this done.”

In Victoria, Peter Evans heads up CryoLogistics Refrigeration Technologies Ltd. which has developed a large vacuum-insulated freezer container that runs on liquid carbon dioxide, can hold a pallet-full of product, and keep it frozen or chilled without having to be plugged in to a power supply or generator. His company is also in the running to subcontract as a supplier to the companies seeking to distribute the vaccine.

The technology for the “SnowShip Sytem” has been in development for about four years, and the company is about to begin commercial production. Evans believes it can provide a solution for some of the delivery challenges COVID-19 vaccines pose.

The container operates by converting liquid carbon dioxide to a solid within the container, generating dry ice. It can do the conversion at a steady, predictable rate, and can be programmed to reach the temperature required by whatever product is stored inside, temperatures from the 2 C to 8 C degree range down to -70 C or -80 C. “We were not thinking COVID when we developed our product,” he said. Now they are.

Evans said the federal and provincial governments and the companies vying to provide the logistics for the operation are looking to scale quickly.

“Nobody really knows what this is going to look like,” he said. “We’re looking to scale the production of these things rapidly if the need arises, and if there’s contracts, obviously we’re going to make it work.”

“We’ve got a few weeks to map this out.”

With files from Kieran Leavitt

Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering federal politics for the Star. Follow her on Twitter:

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Heather Scoffield: Ingenuity and government aid will help. Politicizing public health guidance won’t

Aug 19, 2021 , , , , by shlf

From its perch along the edge of the Rideau River, is making the most of a bad situation without making it worse.

The restaurant has invested heavily in heat lamps and coverings on its patios, of course, and customers can also rent a private fire pit, order up hot dogs, marshmallows and hot chocolate (with or without Baileys), and have a night out on the town — all within public health guidelines for orange-zone Ottawa. Live music too.

Take that, sub-zero temperatures!

Ingenuity will certainly go a long way in helping businesses on the edge weather the pandemic. Chelsea Skillen, manager at The Bridge Public House, believes it will work for them. But bold ideas won’t go far enough for many firms involved in food services, accommodation and tourism, now that the second wave shows signs of spiralling.

Premiers are getting an earful about the closures at hand, often from the very entrepreneurs who helped elect them. And they’re bending, adding dollops of politics to the public health recommendations that were supposed to rule the day. We’re seeing it in Ontario and Manitoba this week, and we’ve seen it in Quebec too — premiers who steer away from stringency only to have to walk back their lenient guidelines because they just aren’t strict enough to keep the virus at bay.

It’s short-sighted and disruptive, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

Fragile companies that are the lifeblood of our communities need more than ingenuity to get through to the other side of this crisis, but they certainly don’t need a counterproductive watering-down of public-health rules for the sake of politics.

There are many, many supports in place to sop up the hurt.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding have been earmarked for individuals and businesses alike, structured so that they can scale back their economic activity to a safer level if need be.

on Friday that 54 per cent of businesses were drawing down on the Canada Emergency Business Account, and a third were using the federal wage subsidy to pay their employees. Those numbers were from August, when COVID-19 was in remission. Since then, the programs have been extended and enriched, meant to help the firms that have not been able to move online or crack the code of operating safely in the second wave.

The commercial rent subsidy has been completely overhauled, and there are now top-ups coming into place targeted specifically at areas heading toward lockdown.

On top of all that, the federal government has issued about $20 billion to the provinces so they can gear up for the second wave.

The point of it all was specifically so that premiers would not have to give in to pressure from companies to stay open and could focus instead on controlling the virus — which would in turn allow companies to reopen sooner rather than later.

But some of the provinces have been slow to spend the federal money. The rapid testing and contact tracing that was supposed to help businesses stay open are not in full swing, tied up in red tape and inadequate investment. And there are holes in some of the government funding that mean some companies are slipping through the cracks.

So it’s no surprise there is pressure on governments to be more lenient. But the responsible answer is to spend the money and fill the holes, not to waffle on public health restrictions as Premier Doug Ford has done this week.

At the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, chief economist Trevin Stratton says additional federal support targeted very narrowly at the hospitality sector would be affordable and smart. He also points to franchisees who can’t qualify for rent subsidies because they are part of a chain, despite operating like a small business.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business sees new companies without a track record left behind, as well as tiny firms often involving just one or a few people.

And struggling firms can’t really take on any more debt, having already overloaded on that, the Statistics Canada report suggests — which means more loans are not the best answer.

Those holes can be readily filled by flexible governments willing to lend a hand. Some firms will fail, but most of them should be able to scrape by if they have a clear idea of what to expect from governments and public health authorities, and if government support is sufficient and predictable.

Winter will be grim, says Stratton, and companies on the edge will need all the help they can get — plus a recognition that their own ingenuity and dedication to respecting public health guidelines can make customers safer.

Luck helps too, says Skillen at The Bridge Public House. They’re on four acres of land in the heart of the city and have a dedicated customer base that’s all in for eating outdoors, even in the cold.

“We’re going day by day, rolling with the punches.”

Heather Scoffield is the Star’s Ottawa bureau chief and an economics columnist. Follow her on Twitter: