Technicians are busy at the entrance to several refrigerated rooms, distributed in a gigantic 10,000 m2 warehouse, in the heart of Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis).
With a temperature maintained between 2 and 8 ° C, those who go inside never stay there for long.
We take out the boxes conditioned the day before in order to make them take the same temperature as the container they will receive: vials of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Since the arrival on Monday afternoon of 19,000 doses (ten doses per vial, and ten vials per box), sent directly by the Anglo-Swedish laboratory, the battle has started on this OCP site.
Specializing in the delivery of medicines to the 21,000 pharmacies in France, this “wholesale distributor” was chosen along with six other competitors to participate in the third stage of the gigantic vaccination campaign put in place by the public authorities since last December.
Vials sensitive to shocks and light
"The moment is important," says Hubert Olivier, President of OCP.
The first step was to supply hospitals and nursing homes.
The second focused on the 1,000 vaccination centers.
It is therefore the turn of general practitioners, and soon pharmacists, to join in the dance.
And we support them in the logistics.
"Time is running out, since the first vaccinations in doctors' offices must begin on Thursday.
OCP had to review its entire process.
Usually, its technicians do not open the boxes and deliver the products ordered as is.
The bottles kept vertically are stored in insulated boxes and then delivered to pharmacies.
LP / Frédéric Dugit
“There, we have to repackage everything,” says Sylvain Pertuy, director of the site and himself a former pharmacist.
On the one hand, each box that arrives contains ten vials.
On the other hand, each pharmacy we have to deliver may only need one vial, if only one doctor has contacted them.
Or two vials, if it's two doctors, etc.
"
Another constraint: the bottles must be handled with the greatest care.
The vaccine is highly sensitive to shock, light and temperature.
It should also be kept upright at all times.
In the basement, the cardboard boxes are loaded into the 70 or so trucks (17 of which are 100% electric) that make up the group's delivery fleet.
No less than 404 pharmacies will be delivered during the day by this single center.
OCP has 40 others, smaller in size, spread across France.
More than 500,000 doses distributed in two days
In total, 11,226 pharmacies declared having received orders from at least one doctor.
Almost 30,000 of them (out of a total of 55,000) have indeed volunteered and will therefore be able to pick up their vial of ten doses (the limit imposed for the moment, in order to avoid any shortage) as of Tuesday. afternoon in their local pharmacy.
A total of 511,740 doses will be distributed in two days throughout France.
The Ministry of Health then plans a gradual ramp-up.
If all goes well, and the production of the AstraZeneca vaccine does not suffer any disruption by then, between 2 and 3 vials maximum per doctor should be delivered as early as next week, or probably around 1.1 million doses in total.
And so on.