I was hoping to finish a blog about the latest press release by Moderna on their Phase 1 trial of their vaccine candidate for seniors. (Sheesh I wish they would release preprints instead of press releases…)
But I just saw this and wanted to bring it to the attention of my readers. It’s going to complicate the distribution of mRNA viruses that is for sure:
“Executives from Moderna and Pfizer on Wednesday separately told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice on Wednesday that mRNA-1273, which is Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine candidate, requires a storage temperature of negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit. BioNTech and Pfizer’s candidates, BN1162b2 and BNT162b2, need to be stored in negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit.” (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moderna-and-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-require-ultra-low-temperatures-raising-questions-about-storage-distribution-2020-08-27)
That means dry ice level cold storage for Pfizer’s and an ordinary freezer for Moderna’s. A quick Google search shows that even a small -80c (-112f) freezer holding 6,000 doses costs about 13k by the way, so the costs of the number of freezers needed won’t be trivial. And, more importantly, I am willing to bet we don’t have enough freezers to store enough doses of the vaccine. (My next blog will do a back of envelope calculation of costs and number of freezers needed.) So, I sure hope someone is thinking about getting them manufactured in the right quantities, now.
Oh, and yes, if it turns out that the Pfizer candidate is the only vaccine that proves really effective in the first batch, poor countries, with minimal infrastructure are so screwed, and even delivering the vaccine to rural parts of the United States requires an infrastructure, I’m also willing to bet, we don’t yet have.