Covid 19 vaccination from factory to arm

AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna are ready with Covid-19 vaccines to be manufactured and supplied in the market. As health authorities aim to recognize the issues before the expected rollout of the Covid vaccine in January, experts also believe that the incidents of counterfeit vaccines are likely to worsen.

In a recent discussion with Reuters, a Pfizer spokesperson said that they anticipate producing 50 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine this year. That is down from an earlier target of 100 million doses. Pfizer’s vaccine relies on a two dose regimen, meaning 50 million doses is enough to vaccinate 25 million people. This is caused due to the lack supply chain traceability where the company has no way of identifying or forecasting the raw material or real time inventory count.

After overcoming the problem of identifying the original vaccine, the multi shot vaccine needs to find a way where people would make sure that they take required shots from the same brand as different brands will be in circulation in the same market.

Industry experts have urged the government bodies to consider the need to incorporate an end-to-end supply chain traceability mechanism on all COVID-19 vaccines. They reason that it is the need of the hour to build a supply chain that has visibility and enhanced effectiveness to ensure that the largest feasible portion of a countries population benefits from the initial limited supplies.

The increasing shift towards digital supply chain and adhering to block chain is a foreseeable solution to the above mentioned problems.

As per GS1, the benefits of linking a supply chain traceability mechanism with the product and patient id i.e, (Aadhaar/National Digital Health ID) are:

• Real-time knowledge and recording of what (batch number, vaccine unit and dosage) is administered to whom (patient) with the help of linking unit and dosage of vaccine with digital ID/Aadhaar number.
• Capability for immediate and targeted recalls, whenever required.
• Real-time knowledge of what stocks are lying where in the supply chain, from the point of manufacturing to point of dispensing
• Real-time monitoring and recording of temperature to ensure that the right temperature is maintained throughout the supply chain – storage as well as transportation.
• Enable counterfeit detection at the point of entry in the supply chain and mitigation of risks through investigating.

This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT) where each unit of vial can be digitized with the help of a digital ID which helps in serialization. Serialization and aggregation allow easy record keeping of each vial in the supply chain in real time. This would not only give the company end to end data of the product journey, but also allow the supply chain to be protected against pilferage and help inventory management.

Once the vial is tracked from origin to destination, the consumer can also verify the authenticity of the product at the time of purchase with a simple scan of the Smart QR code. Researchers at cyber security company Check Point Software found posts claiming to sell a range of Covid-19 vaccines or remedies on the dark web for $250. Europol, the EU’s law enforcement agency, has issued an early warning notification last week. “When a Covid-19 vaccine does become available, it will likely not be available for sale online. However, fraudulent pharmaceutical products advertised as allegedly treating or preventing Covid-19 are already on sale, both offline and online.” This is not just restricted to Europe, but is flooding the global market before the original vials are distributed. A Smart supply chain enabled by IoT solutions allows companies to use the same digital ID to act as an anti-counterfeit measure. Recent developments in product authentication technology use image recognition, artificial intelligence and machine learning to authenticate products even pre-purchase. This is extremely important in order to safeguard consumer health. Another advantage of the Digital ID or smart ID used for anti-counterfeiting is that as each consumer scans it, the brand owner can get “crowdsourced” reporting of possible fakes in the market – never has it been this simple to use the consumer population in the fight against fakes and counterfeiting.

Sepio Products is amongst the leading IoT firms based in India who have developed anti counterfeit solutions using image recognition and AI in order to defeat counterfeiting. Sepio’s unique solution not only allows brands to trace their product from factory to arm, but also solves their anti-counterfeit problems using a plug and play cloud platform where product data can be securely stored.

The issues highlighted in this blog are not unique to the vaccine supply chain. Everyday common household products suffer from similar issues. Lastly, if 2020 has taught us an important lesson, it is that we must be better prepared and a digital supply chain allows brands and companies to be better prepared to manage their supply chains from end to end.

To know more about Sepio’s solutions, connect with them on [email protected]