ATLANTA — Georgia received its first shipment of the coronavirus vaccine Monday, with more expected in the next few days.
Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne got new insight Monday into the plan to get the vaccine shipments safely to the right place.
The Georgia Department of Public Health told Winne that it is working with the Georgia State Patrol, Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security, the Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia National Guard for secure transportation and redistribution needs for the vaccine.
DPH told Winne that a big part of the security picture involves big rigs.
“When it comes to security, have you ever seen anything quite like this?” Winne asked Georgia Motor Trucking Association President Ed Crowell.
“Honestly, no. Not only are there a lot of people involved, but there’s multiple layers of security from the cyber world to the actual physical world,” Crowell said.
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The association says now that researchers and drug companies have delivered on the mission to find vaccines for COVID-19, truckers in Georgia will play a big role in delivering the drug, with unprecedented security, to the places it is needed.
“Our members will be involved at a variety of levels. The largest members of course, United Parcel Service and FedEx, are probably the most famous and well known of that group,” Crowell said. “There will also be some other members involved that have more of a history in medical transportation as well. They’ve all been vetted by the federal government and they’re ready.”
UPS said in a statement that “both UPS and Operation Warp Speed have significant security measures in place at every step of the process to ensure these vaccines arrive securely and safely to their final destination.”
“There’s two types of security concerns. There’s one, the security breach. The other is the continuity, the protection of the product itself,” Crowell said. “Keeping it properly refrigerated, keeping it properly tracked. People should take comfort in the fact that all these doses are actually tracked by GPS. It monitors not only their location but also their temperature so that you know that it’s being cared for from the moment it leaves the factory until it arrives and is actually injected.”
Crowell said it takes a lot of coordination to move the vaccine.
“Probably more so than anything else we’ve ever seen, the trucking community, the companies involved, are coordinating with state and federal law enforcement officials on a variety of levels, from the minute the product leaves the factory until its final delivery,” Crowell said. “The trucking industry in Georgia has been up to every challenge that COVID has brought for the past 10 months.”
DPH confirmed to Winne that vaccine provider sites are responsible for their own security, and that most larger vaccine shipments will go to hospitals and public health departments where they already have security in place.
Vaccines will be closely logged and monitored for removal from pharmacy rooms within public health departments, and access to the rooms will be strictly limited.
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