Astral Aerial Solutions to deploy drones for Covid-19 vaccines

• The company is working with vaccine and drone manufacturers, and Kenya Civil Aviation Authority to deploy the drones.

February 26, 2020: Nairobi-based Astral Aerial Solutions is conducting a pilot run of cargo drones for Covid-19 vaccines in Africa, informed Sanjeev Gadhia, CEO and founder of Astral Aviation at the Vaccine Logistics Virtual Summit organised by Logistics Update Africa.

The company is working with vaccine and drone manufacturers, and Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) to deploy the drones.

Last July, in a webinar organised by the Logistics Update Africa on %u2018Drones for improving healthcare supply chains and creating drone corridors for Africa', Astral Aerial Solutions announced its collaboration with Wingcopter for last mile delivery solutions. Meanwhile on September 28, Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) in association with its sales agent Air Canada executed a letter of intent (LoI), with Astral Aerial.

At the webinar, Gadhia observed that Africa needs 1.5 billion doses of vaccine, which can only vaccinate up to 60 percent of the population over the next 2-3 years. He continued, "Africa will receive additional vaccines from African Union via African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team (AVATT) which will be pre-financed by Afreximbank, which has set aside $2 billion for the vaccines. AVATT has already secured 270 million doses from AstraZeneca/Oxford, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson and last week it secured 300 million doses from Russia."

At present, only 7 countries in Africa has received Covid-19 vaccines and Morocco leads the race with 1.4 million doses.

Astral Aviation operated over 4,000 flights and carried 110,000 tonnes of cargo in 2020.