Cold, hard mission for a US warehouse: Help stop COVID-19

Baltimore: A warehouse in the US city of Baltimore may seem an unlikely place to help save the country from the COVID-19 pandemic, but Brian Gallizzo is prepared to do just that.

"We are ready, we have our tanks full," Gallizzo, chief financial officer for the six-decade-old family firm Capitol Carbonic, told AFP.

How his company will help is by keeping things cool - extremely cool.

Capitol produces dry ice, a necessary component to distribute pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine, which could receive government approval soon.

Pfizer called Capitol because it was on the hunt for the quarter-inch pellets it spits out of a machine resembling a giant spaghetti maker in its Baltimore warehouse.

The dry ice pellets are needed to keep Pfizer's vaccine at just the right, very chilly, temperature.

US regulators will decide next week whether to allow Pfizer to become the first major drugmaker to deploy its vaccine, and manufacturers like Capitol Carbonic are already finding themselves involved in one of the most important medical supply chains in history.

The vaccines from Pfizer and others nearing approval appear to be the United States' best chance for ending the world's largest COVID-19 outbreak, which is again surging to alarming levels nationwide.

Assuming it's approved, 6.4 million doses could be distributed starting soon after December 10, with 40 million available by the end of the month. | An employee makes dry ice blocks at Capitol Carbonic.

However that vaccine also has the strictest temperature requirement of -70 degrees Celsius, about 20 degrees warmer than the lowest temperature on earth recorded, in Antarctica.

Dry ice is the best way to maintain that temperature range, but it's a complicated substance made of solidified carbon dioxide that begins turning to gas as soon as it's manufactured.

In their basketball court-sized warehouse filled with the howl of super-cold machinery at work, Capitol Carbonic makes tens of thousands of pounds in a typical day.

Getting shots to people nationwide will be a logistical undertaking that will test the capabilities of the world's largest shipping firms, the small businesses that undergird the US dry ice supply and the many other companies in between.