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Just when you thought things were going to go wonderfully with President Joe Biden’s “new” plan for vaccine deployment, we come up against another story of someone stepping on a rake and destroying jobs. At the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center in Boston, workers found an unpleasant surprise waiting for them when they arrived Tuesday morning. Over 1,900 doses of Moderna vaccine had “gone bad” overnight and had to be thrown away. Unlike some of the previous cases we covered where workers intentionally destroyed vials of vaccine in malicious ways, this one turned out to be more of a technical issue. One of the freezers where the vaccine was stored had “failed” without anyone noticing and the vials were deemed unfit for use. But it’s the way the freezer failed this raises questions.
Nearly 2,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine were spoiled at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Boston after a contractor accidentally unplugged a freezer, hospital officials said Thursday.
Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center staff discovered on Tuesday that a freezer had failed, compromising 1,900 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
The freezer plug was found to be loose after a contractor accidentally unplugged it during cleanup, according to a statement from Kyle Toto, a spokesperson for VA Boston Healthcare System. The freezer was in a safe place and had an alarm system, he said.
So basically we see a case where a janitor who was cleaning on the night shift accidentally unplugged the freezer where the vaccines were stored or he unplugged it while cleaning and forgot to plug it back in. Either way, it’s probably not going to be treated as a criminal case, but the result is the same. Two thousand people, probably veterans, will not get their shots as soon as expected.
What they need to know is whether their alarm system is working or not. Apparently the freezer was still functional (or would have been if it was plugged in), but when its high temperature alarm should have gone off after being unplugged for a while, no one was notified. This was the real technical failure.
The reason this matters is because it highlights one of the key issues with the Moderna vaccine. Pfizer vaccine should be stored at extremely cold, subzero temperatures. But the Moderna version is not only spoiled if it is too hot, but also if it’s too cold. Last weekend another large shipment of 12,000 doses of Moderna sent to Michigan was all spoiled because they were frozen to subzero temperatures. This may be the result of confusion on the part of the delivery company who thought they were shipping doses of Pfizer or simply some other mechanical failure.
What we are learning here is that the Moderna vaccine can be incredibly effective with a success rate of over 90%, but it is also extremely fragile. It must be stored somewhere within the correct temperature range, otherwise it will deteriorate quite quickly. Obviously there should have been a lot more training not only for the people responsible for storage and administration, but also for the people hired to transport it. This is yet another reason to hope for final approval and wide distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This can be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures of 35.6 to 46.4 degrees Fahrenheit and for longer periods of time.
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