Page 17 - South China Business Journal

e numbers as well. Iconic glass manufacturer
Corning developed a tiny medical glass container
dubbed Valor that is fortified against “cracks,
flakes and breaks that could thwart global efforts
to stop the coronavirus,” reports the Wall Street
Journal.
Corning is manufacturing its vials in New York and
North Carolina, but vial production is also global.
The giant German glassmaker Schott AG produces
huge quantities of medical borosilicate for vials at because an undertaking so vast has to be. I
its four melting facilities: two in Germany and one
each in India and Brazil.
Vaccine Distribution Powered by American
Businesses
Logistics firms such as UPS have been preparing
for a global D-Day-like operation for months.
UPS is expanding its healthcare-related facilities
in California, Hungary, Shanghai, the United
Kingdom and at the UPS Worldport in Kentucky.
UPS has also built out its dry ice production
capabilities to facilitate storage and shipping.
FedEx reports it has “over 5,000 facilities, 80,000
vehicles, 670 aircraft and half a million team
members around the globe” ready to deploy. The
shipper also has nearly 90 cold-chain facilities
across its global network to store vaccines as
needed.
For weeks already, vaccines that are nearing
approval have been produced and shipped to
be administered at the earliest possible date.
Anticipating approvals, United began charter cargo
flights to pre-position vaccines in late November.
Government Support Critical to Success
Government policies and actions have also
contributed in obvious ways. Trade agreements,
including the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related
Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS),
have fostered innovation by incentivizing
high-risk, capital-intensive investment by
biopharmaceutical companies. This helped
produce breakthrough technologies like the
mRNA vaccines advanced by Pfizer/BioNTech and
Moderna.
Similarly, the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement
has fostered the adoption of electronic customs
clearance procedures and made port-of-entry
procedures faster—critical reforms for the
vaccines’ success.
Operation Warp Speed has also made a big
contribution. This is even true with firms such
as Pfizer and BioNTech, which did not receive
funding directly but whose work benefited
from the government’s advanced purchase
commitments that supported production. Other
governments have played similar roles.
If inventing, producing, and distributing vaccines
for COVID-19 is a global enterprise, it is in part
explored this familiar ground four years ago:
The web of domestic and international trade today
allows us to devise products of such marvelous
complexity that no single person knows how to
produce them. What’s more, we mostly never
meet our collaborators in the creation of medical
scanners, smartphones, or even the lowly pencil…
Our ancestors would find many of these products
indistinguishable from magic, but the way we
make them is even more astounding. In fact, the
supporting cast in their production includes people
who may have no idea their labor is contributing to
these final products.
Health experts warn that the pandemic will only be
overcome when vaccination rates worldwide reach
a share of the population—estimated between
half and 80%—that provides herd immunity. So,
Americans will only be free of the COVID-19 threat
when it is defeated all around the globe.
We will beat this pandemic, and we will
do so because people, companies, and
governments all around the globe rallied to
do so. International trade, immigration, and
global supply chains are poised to deliver. It
may be their finest hour.
SOUTH CHINA BUSINESS JOURNAL 14