A Milestone of Hope for a World Still in Crisis

One year ago today, FedEx Express courier Christine Arigo delivered the first vaccine shipment in the U.S. to Boston Medical Center in Massachusetts at 5:53am ET. This milestone marked a turn in the world’s efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 and curtail the pandemic.?

For us at FedEx, it was a day for the history books and one of our proudest moments. After months of planning and preparation by our team members and coordinating with federal and state officials and healthcare companies, a seemingly simple yet monumental event occurred: the transfer of a box of lifesaving vaccines to healthcare practitioners ready to administer them to the public.

A Role We Were Born to Play

For healthcare providers and U.S. leaders, developing a viable and effective vaccine was the priority. Supporting the distribution of the millions of vaccines to every community across the country as quickly as possible was a role FedEx was prepared to play.?

Handling temperature and time-sensitive materials requires an exact and expedient process – one that FedEx Express mastered over its 48 years in logistics and time-definite deliveries.?

At FedEx, we had already spent decades building and testing?temperature-controlled solutions?and?developing tools that equipped us to track vaccine shipments and?monitor their surrounding environment. From origin to destination, FedEx Priority Alert Customer Service Agents use these proprietary technologies to ensure seamless and on-time delivery.?

To date, our team has delivered more than?290 million COVID-19 vaccine doses?in the U.S. alone— roughly half of the total vaccines distributed by the federal government—with an average delivery time of less than 20 hours for the shipments. With a dependable FedEx Express network in place, we’re now delivering vaccines to more than 50 countries and territories and are committed to helping communities we serve around the world access vaccines and medical supplies to help end the pandemic.?

Moving the World Forward

The COVID-19 pandemic put the world into lockdown in the early days, but as an essential business, FedEx found ways to make an impact doing what we do best: moving the world forward.?

As the outbreak spread globally to its peak level, our volume of humanitarian aid increased exponentially. In total, we transported more than 81,000 in-kind shipments between June 2020 and May 2021, impacting 3.2 million individuals around the world. In addition to the relief we provided related to the pandemic, we continued to respond when natural disasters struck, providing relief following flooding in China and India, and the earthquake in Haiti, and continued partnership with our longtime charitable partners.?

At the same time, we supported a 40 percent surge in e-commerce as millions of households ordered essential items to their doorsteps. We expanded locations?and invested in new technologies to handle the growing volume of packages. We also were able to help our?small business partners expand their customer reach with resources that simplify e-commerce using technology, transportation solutions and trade management services.?

Our Most Important Work Yet

It’s important to stop and recognize how far we’ve come in the last year and how much hope and health have been delivered to communities around the world through the incredible scientific achievements represented by these vaccines.

As the global distribution of vaccines expands, we will continue to use our global express transportation network to support the health and safety of hundreds of millions of people. Our work today is our most important and impactful yet, which is why we are prepared to ship COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies to every corner of the world for as long as necessary.