Safe Storage for COVID-19 Vaccines

The development of a COVID-19 vaccine by two drug manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna, last year was welcomed across the globe. A key concern, however, is the safe distribution of the vaccines worldwide. This may cause some challenges for the Pfizer vaccine. This vaccine has to be kept at an extremely cold temperature of -70C (-94F), much lower than the average temperature capabilities of an average freezer. The vaccine cannot be removed from this low temperature more than four times.

As a result of these concerns, Pfizer has designed its own packaging using dry ice which can keep the vaccine cold enough, but only for a few weeks without ultra low temperature freezers. Due to the fact that most vaccines do not require such low-temperature storage, there is no widespread infrastructure of these freezers in place and local GPs and other smaller medical outlets are unlikely to have one. As vaccination programs are now being rolled out across the world, we take a look at the ultra low temperature solutions provided by Froilabo which are capable of safely storing the Pfizer vaccine.

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