 gets us to important stakeholders that we would not have had an access to before. I think that in and of itself has been so huge and transformational for us as a startup. You know that these are some of the top people in the world that you can connect with to try and identify people who get the paradigm shift and who've placed that at the heart of their strategy, whether it's a business or a foundation, but really place that internet strategy and not as a peripheral thing. I think that's really where the value is for people like us at DeSolanator. I think the uplink connection has been huge for us because we always have international ambitions. We are always hoping to gain kind of some kind of connections with world health organization and get introduced to different healthcare systems and I think like uplink has done a great job of accelerating that process. Being part of this cohort has been absolutely amazing in making sure that we are in touch with the right people again at the right time and ensure that our technologies and services are able to not only help with COVID-19, but in any way that we can impact the overall scientific and medical community. I really think that uplink has the opportunity to do a tremendous amount in connecting in supporting entrepreneurs who really are the vanguards, the entrepreneurs, the ones who are out there pushing for it. It is my immense pleasure to welcome you all to a conversation where we will consider the importance of enabling equitable, inclusive vaccine distribution and highlight the need for continued global contribution and collaboration. The healthcare and the mobility platform, supply chain and transport communities have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic engaging the private and public sector on initiatives that serve the greater good. Building on more than two decades of partnership since the launch at the 2000 and 2017 annual meetings respectively, the forum supports GABI, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness and Innovation, CEPI and the COVAX initiative to procure and to deliver doses of a safe, effective and approved vaccine around the world, equitably and efficiently. The Access to COVID-19 Tools Act Accelerator is a worldwide collaboration designed to accelerate the development and production of and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines. It is the only instrument of its kind with principles of universal access and equity at its core. During this pandemic, the central role, transport and logistics coordination play to enable efficient distribution of essential goods have been spotlighted. To deliver on the inclusive goals of COVAX, the chief executives from leading shipping, airlines and logistics industries along with UNICEF and the forum signed a charter in December supporting inclusive global vaccine distributions to LMAIC. Additionally, to facilitate resolution of an ongoing maritime crude change crisis, the forum together with more than 300 companies and organizations have come together to launch the Neptune Declaration on seafarer well-being and crude change. By recognizing the vital role of transport workers, granting seafarers key worker status and by prioritizing vaccine allocation for transport crew, we prevent a deepening humanitarian crisis and contribute to sustainable global economic recovery. With this, it is my pleasure to invite Juliana Tatelbaum from CNBC to moderate our very esteemed panel as we consider the challenge of vaccinating the world from mass production to last maldelivery. Over to you. Christoph, thank you so much. It is my pleasure to host this very important panel on vaccine delivery. It's an hour-long session. The first 30 minutes are going to be live streamed the next 30 minutes, so we'll be a private session for our forum members and partners. Now, we find ourselves in this incredible situation right now where in less than a year, we now have multiple vaccines that have been proven effective in protecting against COVID-19. Focus now has shifted very firmly to distributing those vaccine doses. During this panel, we're going to talk about the logistical challenges of getting these doses from their manufacturing sites to the places where they're being administered, vaccination centers, hospitals, clinics. We're also going to talk about the risks associated with unequal allocation of vaccines, a hugely important topic as these vaccines begin making their way around the world. So to weigh in and provide their expertise on this topic, I'm very pleased to welcome our panelists. We have Frank Apple, the CEO of Deutsche Post DHL. We've got Dr. Seth Barkley, CEO of GAVI. Ms. Dorothea von Boxberg, member of the executive board and chief commercial officer, Lufthansa Cargo, and we have Dr. John Nkengasong, director of Africa CDC. So thank you to our panelists that really look forward to this discussion. I want to kick off, Dr. Barkley, with you. You have been very clear since the start that in a worldwide pandemic, nobody is safe unless everybody is safe. How prepared are we at this stage for the task at hand? So thank you so much, and it's delighted to be here. And I think what I want to start with is to say that GAVI was born 21 years ago at the World Economic Forum, but last year was a moment where we sat down and began to discuss the formation of COVAX and also the first contracts were signed. And it's been extraordinary. As you said, 303 days from the time the first publishing of the genome until the time it was approved as an emergency use product. This has never been done before and was something that has shown the power of science. Now, why was COVAX formed? Well, the previous experience in 2009 was that, and that was with swine flu, was that a small number of countries bought up the doses, and there weren't doses available for the rest of the world. That was the worry here as well. We initially began to worry that the developing countries would be left behind, but we realized that also upper middle income and even some high income. So we opened up the concept of COVAX and for low and lower middle income countries providing support for those countries financially for upper middle income and high income countries. We didn't know if there'd be interest, but to make a long story short, we ended up with 190 countries coming together to work together on this, which shows the importance of solidarity because we're only safe if everyone is safe. What were the ideas behind it? First, equitable access, which is absolutely critical, creating a portfolio of vaccines because at the time we didn't know if any were going to work, and certainly we're delighted to see now that that a number are working, which is going to be important, to try to reduce bilaterals. We haven't done that so well, but why do you try to do that? You want to have the raw material is used for the most promising vaccines. You want scale up to be successful and the promising candidates to be scaled up and used globally. You want to reduce unhealthy competition. Fourth, you really want to keep our R&D going. That's critical right now because we want second generation vaccines that are more temperature stable, that are single dose, but of course, for the new variants, we may need to ultimately make some changes in vaccines. Keep that R&D going. Lastly, the issue we're here to talk about, which is readiness. That includes having regulatory systems ready to go, labeling for the vaccines, indemnification, liability for manufacturers, etc., but it means going to the last mile. I'll finish on this to say that in the middle of this year, around March, April, we had a dip in underbelly capacity of flights going to, for example, Africa, and we ended up having to charter aircraft heroically to get these products out, but we rely on this amazing chain of supply given the fact that vaccines have to be kept in a cold chain. We're preparing countries, but we obviously also have to make sure the logistics is in place, not just for the delivery, but the delivery of vaccines to the world. We will start delivering vaccines in February and in a small way, but be scaling up to try to get to the two billion doses by the end of 2021 that we've promised. Dr. Berkeley, on that note, you as COVAX have pledged to procure around two billion doses in 2021. Can you give us any more granularity in terms of when those doses are likely to be distributed, where you are in procuring them, and which countries are poised to get them first? So the idea is equitable access, so we're going to try to distribute them as broadly as possible. There are vaccine doses in vials now. What we're waiting for is regulatory approval of those vaccines so that they can be distributed widely. The applications have been submitted to WHO for pre-qualification, and we're hoping to have something like 145 to 150 million doses delivered in the first quarter, maybe 500 million in the second quarter, and then one and a half billion in the second half of the year. Obviously, right now, there's a little bit of a global vaccine panic, and so many countries want doses as of today, and we're doing the best we can to move this forward. But historically, I mean, this will be from the first dose of vaccine till doses are distributed in many, many countries in the developing world. That'll be probably eight to 10 weeks, which is extraordinary compared to historical timelines, but of course, we would have preferred to have had those doses available simultaneously in developed and developing countries. Dr. Brokley, thank you for your opening thoughts there. I want to turn the conversation now to Frank Appel, the CEO of Deutsche Post DHL. Frank, can you comment for us on the supply situation in Europe? There's a lot of focus this week on the European Union's frustration with drug companies over disruptions to COVID-19 vaccine supplies that you health commissioner has come out and said all companies producing vaccines in the EU will now have to notify the block if they are shipped elsewhere. What is your take on what's actually happening with these vaccine supplies? I think it's great to see that we have, as I've already said, much earlier than anybody expected vaccines. And of course, the production is now increasing. I can't judge if really is that misunderstanding or a different promise from some of the pharmaceutical companies. The logistics will not hinder it. And of course, the EU can decide what has been manufactured in Europe will stay in Europe. Of course, they have transparency about that through their customs processes. If that's the right decision, I can't really judge because I don't know what the pharmaceutical companies have agreed with the commission or the European countries. From a logistics perspective, do you find that you're running on full capacity or if more vaccine was available? Do you think you could handle more from a logistics supply perspective? We as a company, but the whole industry can manage much more than what is currently needed. We adjust our operating 250 flights a night. So we can do significantly more. The challenge will be not the global distribution. The challenge of this is finally the last mile in the countries. And of course, that is in some countries much more challenging than enough. And governments have to work on that. What can they do to prepare their country for the last mile delivery? I believe that different from some other diseases which happens in Africa more than in the developed world, there is commercial interest to produce more vaccine for everybody different from malaria or others where maybe the investment is not sufficient. And that's the reason why we haven't seen any progress in these. Whereas at many NGOs investing here, we will produce heavily as a planet and that of course facilitates them to bring more vaccines as well to the developing countries. The developing countries have to prepare themselves for the last mile. How you want to organize that? Do you have trucks where doctors are moving around with their countries because then you need not too many refrigerators? All these questions I think need to be answered by the local governments and authorities. We definitely can fly anywhere and we do that every day. Dorothea, I want to bring you in on the back of Dr. Broccoli's comments around having to adjust to the dip in underbelly capacity and as a cargo airliner, you've played a hugely important role in ensuring the supplies of many essential products through the pandemic from PPE to food supplies to the vaccines as well. So how as a business have you prepared for the demands of this pandemic to be able to adjust and provide the capacity necessary to meet these demands? Well, I think the whole airline industry has been heavily impacted by the pandemic. And that is what Cecil also referring to. So a lot of the passenger aircraft have been grounded. And the passenger aircraft in their bellies, so where the baggage is put, they're also containers for freight. And that's about half of the global air freight capacity. And a lot of that has been grounded last year. And of course, now it's slowly but steadily coming back. But there's still a lot of air freight capacity missing. And we as Lufthansa cargo are a combi carrier. So we work with the bellies in the Lufthansa group, but also with our own freighters. And of course, every freighter is in the air every time it can be. So there's never been such a high utilization in terms of block hours and in flights to make sure that we can serve the industry well. And everybody else in the industry has been doing that. All the freighters are flying. And there are lots of aircraft on the ground on the passenger side. And many of those have also been flying as cargo only aircraft, even if it's passenger aircraft. And we've seen that when demand was very strong, for example, out of China for the PPE deliveries, then of course, the industry is there. And therefore, I would agree very much with Frank. The industry is prepared. There won't be a bottleneck in the air freight section of it to deliver the vaccines. I think we are there. Just to give you another example of what happened during the first months of the pandemic, I think PPE has been very much in the media. Everybody has seen it. But another very big topic was so many people moving into home office. And there's been a huge demand for laptops, headsets, speakers, goods that are usually shipped by ocean. But suddenly there was such a high demand instantly that a lot of this has also flown. So I think air freight is always there when things need to move long distance really quickly, then it's available. Thank you, Dorothea, for your thoughts. I want to bring in now Dr. Nikhengizong, Director of the Africa CDC. A major worry is that countries with high transmission can act as a breeding ground for resistant variants. And early studies suggest that the South Africa variant, which is of chief concern to the medical community, shows some resistance to neutralizing antibodies. What is the situation like on the ground in Africa? And do you have all the supplies you need to try to control the spread? Thank you first of all for including me as part of this panel. I think the best way I believe to control the variant is to do two things, to scale up the public health majors that we know the work and which have worked over the last one year in Africa and across the world. And then secondly, is to vaccinate quickly. So if we do those two things, then I think then we get rid of the problem. Unfortunately, the continent is facing a very aggressive second wave of the pandemic, which is of course leading to severe mortality. Last week alone, we witnessed as a continent an increase of about 18 percent in mortality across all 55 member states. So I think that the issue of vaccines is very important to have that discussion. But we as a continent must recognize that vaccines would not be here when we want them. But then as such, we need to really focus on the public health majors that we know work. I think why waiting for vaccines? So they need to be that complementarity between expansive and extensive use of public health majors and vaccines. Now with respect to is the continent ready for for vaccine? Of course, yes, the continent is ready. We have to use a phase approach in introducing vaccines on the continent and also use approaches that we guided by sound epidemiology. For instance, I mean a country like Ethiopia where I'm resident, we know that about 60 to 70 percent of the infections are actually here in Addis Ababa, the headquarters of of of of of Ethiopia. So this is a country of 100 million people. The capital city is five million. So how do we start a vast vaccination program in Addis? If we do that, then we begin to break the backbone of this pandemic right there in Ethiopia. So I think we really need to be creative and be in the manner in which and strategies in which we introduce the vaccines on the continent. We will learn as we go forward I think there is absolutely a need to recognize that that no country is ready. I mean, including the developed countries like the United States and Britain. They are also learning how to do this as scale because I don't think in the history of infectious diseases we have ever vaccinated more than 200 to 500 million people in a year. So I think it's a learning process that we all have to go through, but do it quickly. When it comes to the learning process, can you pin down any particular reason that has enabled the emergence of this South Africa variant as it's been been named in the by the press? What's actually led to the emergence of this this threatening variant? I think we are a virologist for 32 years and we expect that these variants will occur. We are dealing with an RNA virus that is not very stable. And as we the virus goes through multiple immune pressures, we expect that on different passages that we expect that mutations will occur. And of course, it will lead to maybe viruses that will be fitted on the ancestor virus. So I think we expect that to happen. Now it is labeled a South African variant, but we truly don't know if it's it came from South Africa or not because South Africa in Africa is sequencing most a lot of the viruses. Okay, so other parts of the continent are sequencing very limited part of the have limited capacity to sequence the virus. We are the Africa CDC have established what we call the Patrogen Genomic Institute, which is a network of centers of excellence to really promote large scale sequencing of the viruses. So that we begin to understand if this virus is restricted to South Africa or spreading across South Africa. But clearly, we have concerns. I mean, there's things that we know about the virus and there are things that we are concerned about the virus, especially whether it will be responsive to the vaccines that we are currently available. If you look at the mutations, especially those around the neutralizing antibody side, I think this is surely concerning. But again, we really need to conduct studies. And just 30 minutes ago, I was with a team of scientists in Africa as part of the Africa CDC coordination, Slim Carey and Pontiano Suleiman book to put our heads together on what we should be doing to understand more what these mutations really mean for the continent. So again, work in progress, early days to make any sound predictions on the virus only good and sound experiments and science will tell us what it really means. Doctor, thank you for your thoughts. I want to turn back to Dr. Berkeley of high income countries, as you pointed out, have signed bilateral agreements to secure initial doses of multiple vaccines, a hedging strategy, if you will, because we didn't know at that time which vaccines would prove effective or not. Now we very well may find ourselves in a situation where high income countries who have gone to secure doses ahead of time may end up with more doses than they actually need. Is there a plan in place to reallocate those excess doses to developing countries as part of COVAX? So, Juliana, thanks for the question. The numbers are really quite striking. And your analysis is exactly right. People didn't know which vaccines were going to work if any of them were going to work. So they took multiple shots on goal, if you want to use that analogy. And today we estimate that there are more than 800 million of doses that are firm order commitment that are above what would be required to vaccinate those population and another 1.4 billion doses in options. So we have, as part of COVAX, posted a principles for donation. What's important is if countries want to do that. And by the way, we would obviously appreciate them being donated, but we are also in a position to buy them or to take a spot in a manufacturing queue to make them available equitably. What's important is those vaccines have full shelf life, have the ability to be used in different parts of the world, have been going directly from the manufacturers so they've been handled properly and the cold chain is maintained, et cetera, et cetera. So we're in the process of having that conversations with countries. Many, many countries were interested in doing it early for equitable reasons. I think now with this concern on the new variants that John has talked about, there has been kind of a more of a sense of urgency of moving vaccines as quickly as possible. So I'm not exactly sure what the timelines will be, but it's something we will look at going forward. Frank, I want to turn back to you and bring up a topic that Dr. Berkeley mentioned. And this is the potential for new vaccines in the face of these new variants emerging. Yesterday, we heard from Moderna that they're already working on assessing a booster shot, a third shot to better combat the South African variant, for example. From a logistics perspective, how are you thinking ahead and preparing for the challenge that would be involved in getting a new series of vaccines out? Yeah, so first of all, I think with the new vaccines, it's more likely that we can adapt very rapidly because the mRNA vaccines are based on technology which can adapt much more rapidly than classical methods and we are learning a lot. For us, it is not a difference in what kind of vaccine is loaded as long as available. We will swiftly execute that whatever is necessary to bring to the countries. Maybe an element of that could be even ourselves. We are working in 220 countries and territories. If there's enough vaccine, we would be more than happy to vaccinate our people around the world ourselves at our expense. The problem is we don't want to buy at the moment from our life science companies because we don't want to diverge our volumes away from governments. But if the government are saying we can't afford it, we don't get access, that's multinationals and many of them are present in their votes. Let them buy them and vaccinate their own people. We make already a right step because we have 570,000 people around the world. If we would vaccinate them, it is not a game changer. But if you do that for the top 500, fortune 500 companies, it will be a significant step in the right direction. Of course, we would be more than prepared to buy and bring it around the world for our own purpose. Of course, other companies have enough balance sheet strength as well to do that. And I think that should be considered not now because at the moment it's impossible and we should not diverge anything from government. But in due course of the year or next year, it definitely might be more available and still some countries can't do that. So let's do that as multinationals to produce. And we would of course help them to transport that. Hmm. Dorothea, you said that air freight is not going to be the bottleneck when it comes to supplying these vaccines. Where are the major issues that still exist? Because clearly there are some constraints that are playing a role in the slow rollout of these vaccines across the world. Well, I think right now it's really a question of vaccine availability. So all the doses that are there are transported and brought to the last miles. And then of course, last mile is an issue in itself because you don't only need the vaccine, but you also have to have the patient, the doctor, additional material like syringes. So it is a big, big logistical effort to get everything in place and also keeping the cool chain at the same time for the vaccines. But that is, if you want, out of the realm of the air freight industry that goes very much into the final distribution last mile. And thinking about the developing countries, I mean, Gavi is working together with UNICEF. And I think UNICEF has a long history in vaccinating in remote places, in getting it done. We're collaborating with them. We've got a long-standing relationship. And I think they will make it possible. But there are lots of obstacles, I think, in the details. And they'll probably vary from place to place. Thank you, Dorothea. Now, I want to turn back to Dr. Nikenga Song. One of the first things that Joe Biden's administration did when they took the White House was join COVAX. What is the U.S. re-engaging in the global health effort mean, in your view? So I think we were very encouraged to hear that announcement that the Biden administration had decided to join COVAX. I think I said, mentioned, and I've said this in my public pronouncement several times, that COVAX represents and symbolizes the true spirit of global solidarity and cooperation, which has the potential of becoming the new way of being business to foster global problems in solving up common threats like this pandemic. We really don't want this narrative to last that each time the world is threatened, be it in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic or in 2020 during the COVID that we all forward inward and then everybody look after themselves and we forget that we are all connected and we are all united. So I think I'm really pleased and encouraged that the Biden administration has decided to join COVAX. Now, the U.S. has always been a force of good when in global health, when they have exercised their leadership, be it in the fight against HIV-AIDS. I think Sarah and I used to all work in HIV-AIDS for so many years and I think until when the United States joined, decided to launch the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, then the continent of Africa actually began to start seeing a remarkable decrease in deaths. I think that is all thanks to the leadership of the United States government and of course of the global fund that was launched almost at the same time soon. The United States leadership in global health has always been remarkable and significant. So we really hope that their return to need to work collaboratively in a multi-lateral fashion would mean a plus for the global health community in fighting not just the COVID pandemic, but in guaranteeing the health security of the world. Thank you. I just want to wrap up going back to Dr. Berkeley and to wrap up some of the things we've heard out of Frank in particular around the way private companies have been working with governments. But we're starting to see some cracks here and the EU is just the latest example when it comes to what's gone wrong in the supply of these vaccines. In your view, do you think the commitment is there between the private and public sector to get these vaccines out in an equitable way? I think it is. Of course now people are focused on right now when are we going to get our vaccines. But if you stand back for a moment, there are a whole range of new manufacturers in the next week or two. We expect to see two other major manufacturers unblind their clinical trials. Of course, we're very hopeful that they will have positive results as well. The initial vaccines, the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccines, were quite expensive, produced in relatively small quantities to start and had some issues in terms of their cold chain. So they were not the preferred doses to use globally. Of course, they can be used globally. It just is harder and takes a little additional work. It's kind of this next generation which we are seeing. And I think those will be flowing quickly around the world. And obviously, we don't yet know exactly what we need to do. John made this point. We need to use epidemiology. But do we need a booster for people who are at high risk? Do we need another additional vaccine? Do we want to increase the coverage of the vaccines over the population? These are all answers that we're only going to find out as we understand the epidemiology of the disease better. Thank you so much for your thoughts. And thank you to all of our panelists, Frank Gappel, CEO Deutsche Post DHL, Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO, Gaby, Ms. Dorothea von Boxberg, member of the Executive Board and Chief Commercial Officer from Lufthansa Cargo and Dr. John Nkengasong, Director, Africa CDC. This concludes the live stream portion of this session. Thank you so much for joining us.