This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 7, 2022 - March 13, 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to create health, social, industrial and economic crises, posing a variety of challenges to public and private services.

Several countries have introduced innovation to manage the pandemic, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, to deliver essentials such as medical and food supplies and for security, surveillance and inspection. For example, drones are used to monitor crowds to ensure compliance with wearing masks and social distancing, as well as for broadcasting, surveying and mapping. They are also being deployed to spray or dispense sanitisation.

The Brookings research institute, in its paper titled Assessing the Impact of Drones in the Global Covid Response, reported that Zipline, one of the world’s largest and best known drone delivery companies, had run trials of its drone delivery systems for lightweight medical supplies in Rwanda and Ghana before the pandemic, working closely with policymakers more willing to accommodate delivery drones in their airspace than authorities in the US, the EU and other, larger jurisdictions.

Zipline’s largely autonomous drones can carry a payload of up to 1.7kg almost 80km and since 2019, the company has been working to build Ghana’s drone delivery infrastructure in concert with drug maker Pfizer, Ghana’s health ministry, delivery service provider UPS and other partners. These efforts laid the groundwork for a system that could easily be expanded when the pandemic began. In a June 2021 interview, Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo said the company had delivered at least 2.6 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines (primarily the Aztra-Zeneca vaccine, which does not require the low temperatures needed for the mRNA vaccines) in Ghana. The company planned to deliver over 2.4 million more doses, with a particular focus on remote and roadless areas, by the end of last year.

UPS reported on Aug 21, 2021, that the company and its subsidiary, UPS Flight Forward, is operating the first ever US drone Covid-19 vaccine delivery operation. This programme is the second Covid-19 vaccine drone delivery operation globally following the drone deliveries in Ghana.

Venturebeat.com highlighted that Matternet drones were outfitted with a special cargo box that contains Cold Chain Technologies’ customised Phase Change Material Gel Solution, a temperature-­sensitive packaging mixture that maintains the Covid-19 vaccine at 2°C to 8°C and a temperature monitoring device that monitors the vaccine temperature while in transit. These drones were used to deliver Covid-19 vaccines from Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center to one of the health system’s family medicine practices located at Piedmont Plaza, over 1km away.

UPS disclosed that its drone airline received a first-of-its-kind approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry alkaline and lithium batteries, which are needed to power the temperature monitoring devices required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Covid-19 vaccine transport. 

The World Health Organization has highlighted that India is using locally developed drones to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to compromised areas and strengthen the vaccine delivery system.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) led (i-Drone) pilot project is being rolled out in the remote states of Manipur and Nagaland and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 

The inaugural flight of the ICMR’s Drone Response and Outreach in Northeast India, covering 31km in less than 15 minutes, compared with the three to four hours needed to transport the vaccines to Loktak Lake, delivered 900 doses of Covid-19 vaccine from the Old DC Complex in Bishnupur district in Manipur to Karang Primary Health Centre, which is on an island in Loktak Lake. These doses were used to vaccinate 25 people at Karang PHC on the first day of the initiative on Oct 4, 2021.

Brookings further highlighted that in the US, a number of companies conducted drone delivery trials during the pandemic, usually operating with special, tightly limited waivers for flight beyond visual line of sight issued by the FAA. In May 2020, Zipline partnered with North Carolina’s Novant Health to ferry small items like masks, gloves and gowns weighing no more than 1.8kg between a medical centre and a supply storage location, making trips of about 30km to 50km.

On Sept 1, 2021, Reuters reported that a group of drone enthusiasts in Indonesia were using their aerial skills to help during the pandemic by providing a contactless medicine and food delivery service to Covid-19 patients isolating at home.

Armed with five drones, the seven-member team has been working around the clock in Makassar, the capital of the South Sulawesi province, since early July last year to provide deliveries. 

Drones are being deployed in a number of countries, including China, the US, Spain, France, the UK and India, to monitor social distancing, quarantine rules and lockdown compliance.

In a case in point, Popular Mechanics magazine reported that despite public health officials recommending social distancing policies and governments banning large events and shuttering businesses to stop the spread of Covid-19, some people are still not listening. So, to keep people indoors, Spanish authorities are using drones, mounted with microphones, to scold those who are not self-quarantining.

Geospatial World magazine highlighted that in addition to street surveillance, authorities are also using drones to broadcast messages and information on lockdown measures, especially in rural areas that lack open communication channels for health information. Drones equipped with loudspeakers are used to make public announcements to keep people indoors, take necessary precautions, practise social distancing and wear a mask if stepping outside the home. China and many European countries are using drones to broadcast messages to the public.

Geospatial World shared that a Global Times video on Twitter shows a drone hovering over a village in Inner Mongolia, warning an elderly lady: “Yes grandmother, it’s the drone who is talking to you. You should not go out without wearing a mask. You’d better go home and don’t forget to wash your hands.”

However, the use of drones for surveillance raises a debate about privacy and individual rights.

Brookings highlighted that a court in Paris ruled that city authorities could not use drones to monitor social distancing, and communities in the US have snapped back at their use by local police.

1.     Appropriate financial and human resources need to be in place in order to have drone technology that is available when needed — either through service contracts or by having local organisational capacity to run drone operations. It also needs to take international movement, health and supply restrictions into consideration;

2.     Establishing procurement algorithms that are built on selecting the most cost-efficient service that offers quality (service and technology), agility, sustainability, compliance and other key elements;

3.     Drone programme implementation cannot be done without local skills and capacity, therefore, local education and knowledge transfer is the key enabler. This does not only apply to people who can run drone operations, but also to governmental entities and the health sector that are the ultimate end-users of this technology;

4.     Drone utilisation is not possible unless there is local regulation enabling safe drone operations;

5.     Local sensitisation of communities and stakeholders needs to be done before and during the drone programme implementation, in order to inform the public and raise awareness of the technology, ultimately ensuring local social and political acceptance.

6.     Drone integration into the health supply chain has to be shaped and determined by the design of the existing health supply chain system, taking into consideration the problem that drones are solving, the purpose of the use of this technology, as well as clarifying whether drones are a cost-effective alternative to existing transport modalities.

Malaysia should consider investing in and using drones to offer innovative solutions for its medical and social sector.

The Ministry of Health (MoH) could consider deploying drones to transport Covid-19 vaccines as well as other vaccines and medical supplies to areas that are difficult to access.

The food and beverage sector could use drones to deliver food and other essentials, especially to Covid-19 patients who are self-isolating at home, instead of using delivery riders as a means to reduce human interaction.

Respecting privacy, and deploying drones only when necessary, the National Security Council (MKN), in partnership with MoH and other enforcement agencies, could deploy drones in particular in crowded spaces such as stadiums and polling stations, including the upcoming Johor election, to monitor SOP compliance.

Since there has been an increase in infections in the education cluster, with more school children infected, drones could be deployed to selected schools to monitor the children to determine the possible causes of these infections, and for the Ministry of Education to put in place policies and guidelines to protect these children.

Sheriffah Noor Khamseah Al-Idid Syed Ahmad Idid is an innovation and nuclear advocate

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