The Observer asked DGS about whether specific storage sites are being defined for vaccines, in particular for those from Pfizer, which have to be kept at extremely low temperatures, but has had no answer. “We are also considering the issues of the cold chain”, he merely indicated the DGS.
In an interview with Express, Nuno Vale, researcher at CINTESIS and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, explained that in Portugal, research centers and pharmaceutical or analysis laboratories have chests that can reach -80ºC, the temperature required for the conservation of the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, but this does not happen in hospitals.
The question is how to store them when they reach the “buyer” – in this case, the reference hospitals, which intend to buy large quantities of vaccine packages and store, and which usually have equipment that guarantees temperatures between 2ºC and 8ºC ”, indicated the specialist in Pharmacotherapy to Expresso.
But that may not be a problem because if the vaccine is removed from minus 80 degrees and it is placed in a refrigerator for a few days, hospitals would only need to place an order “two days in advance”.
The temperature at which the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored is a fundamental factor as it can compromise its good results: according to the clinical study, temperatures between 70ºC and 80ºC negative to which the vaccines have to be are essential for preserve the synthetic material in the production and transport phase.
Before being used, the vaccine must gradually drop in temperature. What is already known is that it can last up to five days when stored at temperatures between 2ºC and 8ºC, although Pfizer and BioNTech are trying to understand if they can extend that period up to two weeks.
Be Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine to get final approval only the first challenge, of many, will be overcome. Ditto for the drug developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca – both are mRNA vaccines, that use a new technology, which requires different storage and transport rules than those that already exist in the market.
The main obstacle is that mRNA vaccines need to be stored in ultra-cold temperatures when most countries do not have the infrastructure to do so. According to Reuters, not even the most sophisticated hospitals in the United States have such storage facilities. In the case of developing States the lack of financial resources to create the necessary logistics makes the problem even more complex than in the rest of the world.
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The alert has already been left by World Health Organization (WHO) and by several medical experts who fear that these can make vaccines only for rich countries and even by dry ice merchants who foresee having no hands to measure with the increase in orders.
“There is no health system in the Caribbean, South America, the USA or Europe that is prepared to deal with these vaccines,” said Jarbas Barbosa, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, the WHO regional office for the Americas. , at a press conference last Wednesday. “It’s needed store them at -70 degrees Celsius. If countries are going to use vaccines, they will have to prepare. The other eight vaccines that are in phase three of the clinical trials can use the cold nets that we have today in any country ”, he detailed.
According to BBC, WHO is developing, together with Unicef, a mapping of refrigeration facilities precisely to store vaccines against Covid-19.
[Nova vacina. Temperatura é um dos maiores desafios]
Despite this, the New Scientist wrote this Thursday that the Pfizer problem could be resolved, as two other teams of vaccine researchers against Covid, who also use mRNA technology, seem to have evidence that there are ways to keep vaccines stable for three months in a conventional refrigerator.
Besides that, vaccine storage is something that also has to be considered taking into account the characteristics of the various vaccines. It is that, although the vaccine from Pfizer / BioNTech needs to be kept between 70ºC to 80ºC minus, the Johnson & Jonhson vaccine only needs temperatures between 2ºC and 8ºC, while the Moderna vaccine requires conservation at temperatures below 20ºC, being more viable than the temperatures required by Pfizer, as a normal freezer can reach these -20ºC.
This week, as the Observer wrote, accounts began to be made of how it will be possible to travel a vaccine all over the world. What is certain is that it will require the use of 8 thousand “jumbo jet” planes, such as the Boeing 747 and 767 models and the Airbus A330assuming that each person will need only one dose of the vaccine.
To this problem, there is now that of temperature. The vaccine must be delivered to each country at ultra-cold temperatures with the help of dry ice – the solid form of carbon dioxide – and cryogenic refrigerators, which use liquid nitrogen. Cold Jet, one of the main companies operating in the refrigeration market worldwide, called on operators to update the equipment and optimize the production of dry ice, at a time when demand is already increasing.
Currently, the existing refrigerated transport infrastructure and the supply chain are not prepared to handle shipments with these low temperatures, ”warned the company in a statement.
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Pfizer has been planning distribution chains since March, when it started developing the vaccine. “Ensuring that billions of people worldwide have access to our potential vaccine is as important as developing it,” said CEO Albert Bourla, quoted by Wall Street Journal.
Already there thousands of vaccines ready to depart from two specific locations: one in Kalamazoo, Michigan (USA), and another in Puurs, Belgium. These facilities, according to the The Guardian, are the size of football stadiums and can hold 350 large freezers, where the vaccines will be kept and then sent to the various corners of the world. In addition to these, there are also two distribution centers, one in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin (USA), and another in Karlsruhe, Germany, which have more storage capacity.
A Pfizer account produce up to 50 million doses by 2020 and up to 1.3 billion next year and has already requested an Emergency Use Authorization from the American drug agency (FDA, Food and Drug Administration) so that the vaccine can be used on a large scale, even though it is in clinical trials. If it has the green light from the FDA, the American drugmaker says it will be able to send them “very shortly after,” a Pfizer official explained to the Wall Street Journal.
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