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A broken freezer containing more than sixteen hundred doses of the COVID-19 vaccine could have turned out to be catastrophic. Instead, quick thinking and bold action turned a disaster into a bit of a miracle in Seattle. When it became clear that Moderna’s doses would expire quickly, two clinics split the doses and sent out the late-night call to arms, so to speak.
In the end, every dose was used up and over sixteen hundred lucky Seattle residents got ahead of the vaccination curve:
Hundreds of people rushed to Seattle University and University of Washington clinics Thursday night to try and receive a COVID-19 vaccine before doses expired.
Swedish and UW spokespersons said a freezer storing Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine broke at Kaiser Permanente, leaving 1,650 doses of the vaccine at risk of expiring.
Swedish and UW split the doses and started administering them.
“The teams worked vigilantly and closely together throughout the night and early in the morning to ensure that all doses were used and that no vaccines were lost,” said a representative from Kaiser Permanente in Washington.
Given the highly regulated environment in which this effort has taken place, this quick and nimble thinking is all the more impressive. We’ve heard stories before of spoiled doses, accidentally or in more suspicious circumstances, and we should at least expect the old type of hiccups to occur occasionally. Usually, the regulations and penalties for breaking them might have thrown the doses in the trash, as this early stage of vaccinations doesn’t exactly reward thinking outside the box.
For example, as more than one person pointed out on Twitter, Andrew Cuomo’s draconian sanctions for vaccinating outside of his rigid regimen would never have produced this kind of improvised circumvention. Hundreds of people would never have received these doses. Instead, given room for innovation and creative thinking, Seattle healthcare providers turned a failure into a smash hit, and all between 11 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.
The men and women who have taken these steps to protect their community and get the most out of every dose of these endangered doses deserve praise. Hopefully we’ll start seeing enough of these doses soon, so that we don’t have to stick to rigid distribution models in the first place.
Addendum: Also note where this took place – in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. It was there that the anarchists seized several city blocks in June and created the CHAZ – Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Imagine if the city was still tolerating this when this happened. Innovation and creativity require public order and stability, as well as leeway to make quick decisions without drastic sanctions.
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