The Gilman Brothers, a Bozrah based manufacturing company, has developed a vaccine transport system that can keep a vaccine at the temperature of dry ice for three days.
The transport system, made of foam and insulation boards manufactured by the company, holds 66 pounds of dry ice and maintains a temperature of -75 degrees Celsius for three days. The company worked with the Army Corps of Engineers to develop the system and test its efficacy.
Evan Gilman, president of the family company, said that they were approached by the army after the state learned that some potential COVID-19 vaccines might require extremely cold temperatures for storage and transportation.
Gilman said that they were asked to develop a transport system that would be able to maintain the proper temperature, that was easy to move and assemble, and that was cost effective.
According to a memo from the Connecticut National Guard, the storage container developed by the Gilman Brothers was tested and found to be effective at maintaining a temperature of -70 degrees Celsius for over 72 hours with a single charge of dry ice.
“The difference in this is that it is truly a system because it is engineered to put the dry ice in a certain position around the vaccine payload,” said Gilman.
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The dry ice fills the container and surrounds a box in the center that holds the vaccine. The current model is able to hold 500 doses of vaccine.
“We did want to develop something that was easy to assemble, lightweight, can be transportable whether you need it to be mobile or static,” said Ari Luna, business development manager for The Gilman Brothers Company.
There is no timeline for approval of a COVID-19 vaccine or distribution.
The company has not been contracted at this point. They say that when the need arises, they have the capacity to deliver thousands of systems.
“We would be in a position, within a week, to deliver anywhere from 12,000 to 17,000 units,” said Luna.
“We go in whatever direction we think we can help,” said Gilman.
