Almost three months since the first emergency use approval of a vaccine, FedEx Express is anticipating further growth in vaccine volume.

The company has started shipping a third approved Covid-19 vaccine to dosing centres throughout the United States, on behalf of distributor McKesson, who was chosen as the centralised distributor for Covid-19 vaccines and ancillary supply kits in August last year. FedEx moves approximately half the doses allocated by the federal government, with UPS getting the even split.

Since mid-December last year, it has shipped millions of life-saving jabs, and FedEx says it is prepared to scale up to accommodate anticipated growth in volume throughout the spring and summer.

“As vaccine production ramps up and more vaccines are approved, we expect to see a significant uptick in COVID-19 vaccine and supply kit volume moving through our network in the weeks and months ahead,” said Don Colleran, president and CEO for FedEx Express.

“The manufacturers are getting approval to ship COVID-19 vaccines with greater temperature ranges and varying dosing allotments, which means more packages moving to more places through our global network,” he noted.

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Nearly three months after COVID-19 vaccine distribution began, FedEx has shipped COVID-19 vaccines and supply kits to administration sites across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington DC.

FedEx said it will apply the same process it did with Pfizer’s vaccine to transport the new vaccines from Janssen: using its overnight delivery service and advanced monitoring for shipment tracking.

The cargo integrator added it will be delivering COVID-19 vaccines to US military bases overseas for the Defense Logistics Agency, and is working closely with the Canadian government and healthcare companies for vaccine shipments to all 13 Canadian provinces and territories.

“Over the past three months we have demonstrated the power of our network as we deliver safely and reliably with an average delivery time of less than 20 hours,” said Richard W. Smith, regional president of the Americas and executive vice president of global support for FedEx Express.

“Because we are able to ship to every ZIP code in the US, we can deliver to rural, suburban and urban destinations throughout the country within 24-hours while tracking the packages from start to finish in real-time as they move through our network.”