Healthcare worker looks out from a hill

How COVID-19 vaccines are getting to the world’s remotest places

Devoted teams of health-care workers are trekking great distances to deliver the life-saving inoculations.

With a cooler of COVID-19 vaccines in hand, health-care worker Nazir Ahmed searches for shepherds and nomadic herders among the rolling hills southwest of the city of Srinagar in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir in June.
Photograph by Dar Yasin, AP Photo

Nazir Ahmed stands on a hilltop in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir gazing at the rolling green landscape that unfolds before him. The health-care worker scans a nearby valley, searching for shepherds tending their sheep by the meandering branches of the river below. Dangling by his side is a bright blue cooler, a vibrant reminder of Ahmed and his team's urgent task: Deliver as many COVID-19 vaccinations as possible.

The team is among many groups who are trekking, boating, dogsledding, and more to deliver vaccines to people in the most remote corners of the world. No matter how secluded, all communities are at risk from the deadly virus. The question is not if it will arrive: "The virus has

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