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What's needed to protect Covid-19 vaccines during transport

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Adam Tetz , director of Worldwide Marketing at Peli Biothermal offers a summary of the temperature requirements needed to transport, store and use Covid-19 vaccines. 

When the first Covid-19 cases were reported, no one could have predicted the devastating impact this virus would wreak worldwide.

Developing Covid vaccines was the first step in the fight back against the virus. The world then faced the significant challenges of having to protect, transport and safely store temperature sensitive pandemic payloads worldwide.

Developing effective Covid-19 vaccines is only part of the battle in the ongoing fight against the virus. It’s imperative the cold chain is maintained during shipping and storage, ensuring approved vaccines can be deployed worldwide without affecting the efficacy of any life-saving jabs.

It had been anticipated that the first year of the international inoculation programme would be dominated by the need globally for a complex, costly infrastructure, including vast freezer farms providing storage at temperatures of -80C.

However this has not been the case as temperature requirements have changed according to the rising range of vaccines being developed, approved and administered.

Collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA) resulted in the approval of the transportation and storage of vaccines at more manageable temperatures, including -20C and 2C – 8C.

The advantage of the introduction of vaccines which can be stored in a standard refrigerator at 2-8 degrees Celsius makes them more useful and accessible to developing countries, which may not be able to store large amounts of vaccine at low temperatures.

Although some vaccines still need extreme temperature requirements, which are more difficult and costly to maintain, requiring more exotic coolants such as dry ice to achieve -80C, what we continue to see are the various vaccines’ tight temperature shipping and storage requirements changing at a rapid rate.

Temperature conditions are determined by the requirement of the vaccine or therapeutic that’s developed and subsequently approved. We are now seeing the introduction of vaccines requiring more easily controlled temperatures during transit, storage and inoculation including -20C or +5C.

These temperature requirements can be maintained via the existing infrastructure of refrigerators and freezers, which are already in place at clinics and hospitals. It also aids the ongoing deployment of vaccines to more remote regions which are harder to reach or do not have the necessary infrastructure in place to transport and store vaccines requiring extreme temperature protection.

To meet the stringent temperature requirements for vaccine distribution from manufacturer to clinics, hospitals or pop-up vaccination centres, specialised thermal packaging products have been adapted and produced within the industry that are designed to protect and perform for every step of these vaccine journeys. 

The temperature requirements for shipping and storage can be complex and as additional approved vaccines are produced the logistics of transporting temperature sensitive pandemic payloads plays a major part in ensuring the worldwide vaccination programme remains on track.

VACCINES PROVIDING PANDEMIC PROTECTION

Although the shipping and storage requirements of emerging temperature sensitive vaccines vary, they all need protection to mitigate potential temperature excursions during transportation.

So how do the current approved vaccines compare when it comes to temperature transportation and storage requirements?

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