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About 4,400 Moderna coronavirus vaccines sent to Maine are being replaced after being potentially spoiled after exceeding a maximum temperature, health officials said Tuesday.
Thirty-five vaccine sites have received compromised doses that have yet to be used, said Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Doses are shipped with an electronic device indicating whether vaccines ever exceed a maximum required temperature of 4 degrees below zero, which alerted those responsible to the problem.
Shah said the state and federal governments are working with Moderna to see if the vaccines can be used, but withheld doses for now as a precaution. These sites will receive replacement doses starting today, he said. He said other states, including Connecticut, had a similar problem with certain doses.
Health officials are trying to find out where in the process the vaccines have been potentially compromised, Shah said. He believed this had happened during the shipping or processing phase, and not with suppliers or when vaccines were going through the Maine CDC.
Moderna vaccines are typically sent to smaller healthcare providers who may not have the capacity to store Pfizer vaccine, which requires an ultra-cold freezer to remain viable. They can also be maintained using dry ice. Moderna vaccines are also shipped in packs of 100 – Pfizer is available in 975 packs – which allow easier storage for small clinics.
The amount of potentially compromised vaccine represents about a quarter of the vaccines Maine ordered last week and half of the Moderna order, according to a press release. The state receives tens of thousands of vaccines every week, often less than expected.
Maine recently expanded its immunization schedule to include older Mainers and those whose health makes them more vulnerable to the virus, but this process is expected to progress relatively slowly if the vaccine allocation does not increase. Last week it was revealed that a vaccine stash the federal government planned to release did not exist.
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