Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is on display at Rady Children’s Hospital before being put back in the refrigerator in San Diego, California, on December 15, 2020.
Adriana Drehsler | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. officials said Wednesday they quarantined several thousand doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in California and Alabama this week after an “anomaly” in the transportation process caused the storage temperature to cool. too.
The Pfizer vaccine, developed with German pharmacist BioNTech, requires a storage temperature of about 70 degrees Celsius. Vaccine vials are stored in trays, which contain a minimum of 975 doses each, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
General Gustave Perna, who oversees the logistics of President Donald Trump’s vaccination program, Operation Warp Speed, told reporters that two vaccine trays arriving at two separate locations in California had to be returned to Pfizer after the temperature of somehow it dropped to minus 92 degrees Celsius.
The vaccine “never got out of the truck,” he said during a news conference Wednesday. “We immediately returned them to Pfizer and sent immediate shipments to replace those two trays. We are now working with the FDA, CDC, FDA and Pfizer to determine if this anomaly is safe or not, but we are not risking it and we can see it.”
He said the “anomaly” happened again in Alabama.
“All over the other side of the country, in Alabama, two trays were received in one place. The same anomaly was at least 92. We were able to stop and quarantine the vaccine, stop and get a replacement shipment. in Alabama. ” He said.
It is unclear what caused the drop in storage temperature. Pfizer did not immediately return any feedback requests.
Americans began receiving some of the first shots of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the Pfizer vaccine on Friday. Medical officials and experts had already acknowledged that the Pfizer vaccine would present a new logistical challenge, as it must be stored at ultra-cold temperatures.
“We’re talking cold. It’s unprecedented,” Soumi Saha, a pharmacist and vice president of defense for Premier, a consulting firm that works with thousands of hospitals and residences, told CNBC.
He said it was “completely new territory” for health systems. “And so this is a new logistical challenge to distribute this vaccine and get it to the right place and do it while maintaining the integrity of the product,” he said.
During the briefing, Perna said vaccine deliveries in the United States are on track, and that 886 deliveries are expected to be shipped nationwide on Thursday. The federal government administered 2.9 million doses of Pfizer vaccine this week. Next week, the government plans to ship an additional two million doses of Pfizer vaccine and 5.9 million doses of Modern vaccine if the FDA removes them, Perna said.
The FDA’s advisory committee on vaccines and related biological products, an external group of medical experts advising the agency, is voting Thursday on whether Moderna’s vaccine is recommended for emergency use. A favorable vote by the committee will likely pave the way for Moderna’s vaccine to become the second approved for the U.S. in the U.S., behind Pfizer. FDA approval could arrive as early as Friday.
“It’s a constant cadence of deliveries to the American people,” Perna said.