In the coming months, billions of doses of coronavirus vaccines will be dispatched via truck, plane, ship and rail to hospitals, clinics and pharmacies around the world. With that cargo worth tens of billions of dollars and some individual shipments valued as high as $70 million one thing is certain: Crooks will try to steal some of it. For freight haulers, the vaccine rollout poses “the biggest security challenge in a generation,” says Thorsten Neumann, chief executive officer of the European arm of the Transported Asset Protection Association, an industry group representing companies that carry precious goods. Interpol in December issued an orange alert notice warning that it expects a dramatic increase in armed robberies of vaccine shipments, as well as vandalism by anti-vaccine militants. And if today’s highly profitable black markets for drugs treating, say, cancer and arthritis are any guide, it will be relatively easy for thieves to unload their loot.
Share: COVID-19 vaccines are literally worth more than gold. That s the kind of value that criminal elements and other bad actors like to exploit. Behind the scenes, governments and industry are adding new layers of security to prevent them from stealing the new biologic medicines or their digital recipes. The most visible sign that COVID vaccines are no ordinary shipments is the presence of armed U.S. marshals on the floor of distribution centers and in vehicle escorts. Throughout the process we ve been concerned with protecting intellectual property, protecting data as well as physical theft, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Michael Mac McCurry, the director of security and assurance for Operation Warp Speed, said in an exclusive interview.