Dubai's Emirates seeks key role in global vaccine delivery

The belly of the Emirates plane that touched down in Dubai early Sunday from Brussels was stuffed with precious cargo: tens of thousands of doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. The arrival was part of an effort by the Middle East's biggest airline to pivot from shuttling people to shipping cargo — and grabbing a central role in the global vaccine delivery race. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to clobber the aviation industry, the disaster has hit long-haul carriers like Emirates hardest. So the airline is ferrying around the very substance it hopes will get passengers back into its seats and revive the flagging travel sector. Over the weekend, workers scurried around the tarmac at the Dubai International Airport, unloading several aluminum containers crammed with vaccine vials and dry ice into a vast florescent-lit cargo terminal. The key transit hub, previously used for the global shipment of pharmaceuticals, is now at the center of a growing vaccine supply network based in the UAE. Emirates already has delivered millions of doses to Latin America, South Africa and Egypt from major manufacturing hubs in India and elsewhere. With 15,000 square meters of refrigerated storage space, the sprawling facility can help maintain the required temperature controls for two of the leading COVID-19 vaccines that use the new vaccine technology messenger RNA, or mRNA. <br/>