BOSTON (AP) – Nearly 2,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine broke down at a Boston Veterans Affairs hospital after a contractor accidentally turned off a freezer, hospital officials announced Thursday.
Staff at Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center discovered Tuesday that a freezer had failed and compromised 1,900 doses of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine.
According to a statement from Kyle Toto, a spokesman for VA Boston Healthcare System, it was found that the freezer plug was loose after a contractor accidentally disconnected it while cleaning. The freezer had been in a safe place and had an alarm system, he said.
The system investigates the cause of the incident and why the control alarm system did not work. There are more doses on the way, Toto said, and officials “do not anticipate the disruption” of the system’s vaccination effort.
Temperature problems have led to problems in the deployment of vaccines in other states.
About 12,000 doses of Moderna shipped to Michigan on Sunday were damaged after it got too cold. In Wisconsin, a pharmacist faces charges after authorities say he deliberately ruined hundreds of doses by taking them out of the refrigerator for two nights.
The Modern vaccine should be stored at normal temperatures in the freezer, but not at the ultra-cold temperature required for Pfizer-BioNTech firing.
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VIRUSES BY NUMBERS
The number of recently confirmed coronavirus deaths increased by 80 on Friday, while the number of recently confirmed cases of COVID-19 increased by more than 4,900.
The new deaths put the state’s confirmed number of COVID-19s at 13,702 and the number of cases confirmed since the start of the pandemic was close to 468,000.
The actual number of cases is likely to be higher because studies suggest that some people may become infected and not feel sick.
There were more than 2,000 registered people hospitalized on Friday due to confirmed cases of COVID-19, with about 420 in intensive care units.
The mean age of the hospitalized was 71 years. There were more than 89,000 current active cases of COVID-19 in the state.
The number of probable or confirmed deaths from COVID-19 reported in long-term care centers rose to 7,857.