Vaccines in late stages of testing must be stored at temperatures of at least minus 80 C (minus 112 F), which is akin to conditions for transporting ice cream and steaks to supermarkets.
When a vaccine is finally ready, hospitals, pharmacies and physicians’ offices will be turned into vaccination sites. The problem is, not all of these locations have specialized freezers.
In a mad rush to push a vaccine to an unsuspecting public, logistics, public-health and drug-industry officials have forgotten to finalize a cold-storage supply chain that will efficiently deliver vaccines all over America without letting the products become warm and ineffective.
Hospitals are considering the purchase of special freezers to solve any issues about equipment and storage capacity. Meanwhile, logistics companies and other nontraditional health-care competitors are setting up facilities to house hundreds of mobile cold-storage units or as freezer farms.
Like dairy or meat products, vaccines have chemical structures that are maintained when kept within certain temperature ranges. Drug companies already have data on optimal temperatures for chickenpox and shingles vaccines.
However, coronavirus vaccine development has been fast-forwarded to stop the further spread of the pandemic. This means health experts need more data about storage requirements, which is usually determined once clinical trials have concluded....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...