DHL has published a white paper looking at what the logistics sector has learned from the pandemic.

The white paper ‘Revisiting Pandemic Resilience’ looks at the challenges logistics companies have run into in what has been the worst public health crisis in 100 years. The sector however largely stood up to the challenge, supplying medicines and medical supplies as well as equipment to enable governments and the health sector to fight back. DHL alone has delivered more than 200 million doses of approved vaccines all over the world, even though the cold chain supply chain had to be extremely rapidly rolled out in order to meet demand.

“Logistics and supply chain management play a key role in pandemic management. Keeping supply chains running and ensuring delivery for essential health supplies provided valuable lessons”, explains Katja Busch, Chief Commercial Officer DHL. “We rolled out new dedicated services for the vaccine distribution at unprecedented speed. All sectors, industries, and nations must work together to successfully end the acute phase of this pandemic. Forming strong partnerships and leveraging data analytics will be key. We also need to remain prepared for high patient and vaccine volumes, maintain logistics infrastructure and capacity, while planning for seasonal fluctuations by providing a stable and well-equipped platform for the years to come.”

The white paper concludes that pandemic planning needs to be put in place by the logistics sector and public bodies alike, with systems in place for both public sector and private sector to work in step from the moment such a thing becomes apparent. At the same time, efforts must be made to continue supplying vaccines to keep COVID-19 at bay and prevent another wave from a future mutation from getting out that may not be beaten off by vaccines’ conferred immunity.