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JFK Airport is in business of transporting eggs to make flu vaccine

Surging demand for eggs used to make vaccines is helping keep John F. Kennedy International Airport’s state-of-the-art animal handling facility afloat during the coronavirus, The Post has learned. The Ark at JFK — a $65 million facility used to transport large animals and household pets — is now in the business of moving some 6,000 …

Surging demand for eggs used to make vaccines is helping keep John F. Kennedy International Airport’s state-of-the-art animal handling facility afloat during the coronavirus, The Post has learned.

The Ark at JFK — a $65 million facility used to transport large animals and household pets — is now in the business of moving some 6,000 eggs a week used for medical purposes, including the flu vaccine, sources said.

“With the decrease in volume on the pet side, the egg business is helping us keep our people employed,” Elizabeth Schuette, managing director of the Ark told The Post. “It’s helping to sustain our business right now.”

Egg-based vaccines have already been ruled out as a cure for COVID-19, but drug companies may be upping their production of the flu vaccine to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed if the coronavirus reemerges next flu season, experts said.

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been reiterating the importance of getting the flu shot in recent weeks amid growing fears of a double-whammy flu-and-coronavirus epidemic.

“Next fall and winter, we’re going to have two viruses circulating and we’re going to have to distinguish between which is flu and which is the coronavirus,” Redfield said last week.

Demand for medical eggs, which are produced in undisclosed facilities as a matter of national security, has been unusually high this year, agreed Richard Wohlrab, vice president of operations at American River Logistics, which tapped the Ark to help move eggs amid surging demand.

“There is increased production of the eggs and a need for more support to get them on airplanes,” Wohlrab said.

The Ark was built in 2017 to provide medical and general care for animals coming in or out of JFK and is used by travelers seeking to prevent their pets from sitting in cargo for hours. It also provides quarantine services for race horses, zoo and farm animals coming to the US from abroad.

But that business has dried up due to stay-at-home orders that have stalled travel. “Right now we have the occasional shipments of birds, some horses and these eggs,” Schuette said.

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