New Delhi: India is moving towards one of the largest universal immunization programs (UIP), as a vaccine is likely to hit the market very soon, lack of cold-chain facilities in the country may pose a serious challenge to Covid-19 vaccine distribution program, Bofa Securities a foreign brokerage firm, said in a report on Wednesday.

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According to the report, the Indian cold chain market with a 37-million-ton capacity is very fragmented. The country does not have a single cold chain operator with a capacity of over 5,000 tons, and very few of the 3,500 companies are ''pharma-compliant'' as per World Health Organization (WHO) norms.

"India's struggle with cold chain for COVID-19 vaccine stems from the fact that despite one of the large cold chain capacities in the world, there are not many large participants," the report said.

It is also expected, that the cold chain facilities that are used in the widely successful polio immunization program, can be repurposed for the Covid-19 vaccine. For the Polio vaccine program, there is a dedicated cold-chain facility, through which the vaccines were transported in temperatures ranging from 2-8 degrees Celsius

According to the brokerage firm, the estimated cost of transporting a single vaccine at around Rs 600, and assuming that up to 400 million Indians are to be vaccinated, the overall logistics market comes at Rs 21,000 crore.

It is also worth mentioning, the biggest obstacle for investment activity is the uncertainty over which of the vaccine candidates gets approved.

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The firm also said that for the overall 400 million doses forecast, India may need 30,000 tons of transportation capacity which is about 11,500 vehicles.

Pfizer's and Moderna's mRNA vaccines need extreme cold temperatures for stability whereas the one from AstraZeneca (AZN)/Oxford can be stored, transported, and handled at standard refrigerated conditions between 2-8 degrees Celsius, it said, adding India does not have any facilities at all for transporting vaccines at ultra-low temperatures like -80 degrees Celsius required for the Pfizer vaccine.

The report also stated that, as there is also less visibility on the future use of capacity which makes private players question the return on investment (ROI) on such exercise many private companies are waiting for clear directives from government and pharma companies.