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BOSTON (CBS) – Almost 2,000 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine were compromised at the VA Medical Center in Jamaica Plain after a freezer crashed.
Earlier this week, a contractor accidentally unplugged the freezer while cleaning up after a pipe burst and flooded the room where the vaccines were stored. As a result, 1,900 doses of the vaccine were compromised.
“For the Moderna vaccine, it’s 12 hours. Once it has been at room temperature for longer than that you can no longer guarantee its effectiveness and therefore you cannot administer the vaccine, ”Dr Paul Biddinger, medical director of preparation, told WBZ-TV. in the emergency room at Mass General Brigham.
Kyle Toto, a spokesperson for the VA Boston Healthcare System, told WBZ that the vaccines were not thrown away.
Toto said the freezer was in a safe place and an alarm system was installed. An investigation is underway to determine why the surveillance and alarm system did not work.
“Reconstitution doses are underway and we do not plan to interrupt our vaccination effort,” Toto said.
Dr Biddinger said proper storage is essential to maintain the integrity of the vaccine’s key component and its overall success against the virus.
“The problem is that messenger RNA, mRNA, is really fragile. People kind of made the analogy of an M&M that really, really melts away.
Massachusetts representative Stephen Lynch said doses were transferred to Brockton and West Roxbury while the cleanup operation was still ongoing.
“We just think it was an accident,” Lynch told reporters on Friday. “Part of the contributing factor was how these outlets work. One of them is a lag, so it is very difficult to get out. But the one at the top of the freezer was direct pull, so the engineering staff here fixed that. They created a medium, they took pictures of this sheet and sent it to all the other VA hospitals that have this thermo-scientific freezer so that in case it could happen elsewhere.
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