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Supply chain problems that stymied retailers and clogged U.S. ports this year are expected to continue into 2022 as the COVID-19 Delta variant’s effects linger. That means shoppers face potential delays in retailers replenishing everything from video games to clothing — especially during the coming holiday season.

“I half-jokingly tell people ‘Order your Christmas presents now because otherwise on Christmas day, there may just be a picture of something that’s not coming until February or March,'” Scott Price, the international president for shipping giant UPS, told the AFP wire service.

Some consumers are already buying holiday gifts. More than 1 in 4 holiday shoppers plan to start by the end of this month, while more than half plan to start before Halloween, according to a new CreditCards.com survey.

United States (US)-based United Parcel Service (UPS) Foundation has donated ultra-cold chain equipment to support the Government of Malawi’s preparedness to receive, store, and distribute the Pfizer vaccine across the nation.

The 30 state-of-the-art portable freezers can each store up to 6, 000 vaccine doses, and maintain temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius.

Additionally, they are equipped with uninterrupted power supply and can be plugged into a cigarette lighter receptacle in a vehicle for transportation.

UPS has also donated 50 portable cold chain boxes with a capacity to carry up to 6,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine maintained at two-to-eight degrees Celsius for four to five days without electricity.

One of the most profound, and perhaps unanticipated impacts of the COVID pandemic is the dramatic changes to the global supply chain, global workforce, and newfound pressures on delivery and logistics. Certainly no one would have imagined that a primarily health-related cause should have such profound economic, workforce, and basic materials impacts.

However, out of challenge comes opportunity. Organizations are re-examining their processes and technologies that deal with all aspects of producing and delivering goods and services to market, from the origination of raw materials to the delivery of finished products. Organizations focused on shipping and logistics are especially realizing the new reality, and certainly UPS, one of the largest delivery and logistics companies in the world is no exception.

Speaking at an upcoming Data for AI event on October 7, 2021, Gregory Brown, Vice President of Strategy and R&D, Advanced Technology Group at UPS and Laura Patel, Principal Data Scientist at UPS explain exactly these impacts and how UPS makes data-driven decisions for AI innovation. In this Forbes interview, Greg and Laura share some insights they will be diving into at the online event.

Wes Wheeler, president of UPS Healthcare, who was interviewed for the Cargo Masterminds series, identified the future of global supply chain for the life sciences sector with an example from Covid-19 vaccine development and distribution.

“It’s interesting to note that moving drugs or vaccines at minus 70 degrees Celsius is actually a little bit simpler than moving drugs at minus 20 degrees Celsius. It does not sound logical, but it is true. Because minus 70 degrees Celsius can travel safely with dry ice as long as it doesn’t sublimate. In a short enough time, you can maintain that temperature for quite a long time, up to 10 days. And then, you can, of course, replenish the dry ice to maintain that stability. At minus 20 degrees Celsius, which is more like frozen, a lot of the packaging that we deliver in is time sensitive. Also, the packaging only holds minus 20 degrees Celsius for a certain period of time, sometimes 56 hours, sometimes 72 hours, but not much longer than that. So those materials have to be returned for reuse.”

UPS, which distributed both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, first in the US and later to over 100 countries outside, had designed a very complex but precise supply chain to ensure the stability of the vaccines under a very strict temperature control management.