But this is the first mRNA vaccine, and it turns out to be a precious little snowflake. Pfizer's vaccine has to be stored and shipped at ultracold temperatures, less than 80 degrees below zero—it'll keep for a few days at higher but still very cold conditions. And it needs vials made of a special glass that's able to tolerate the freezing temperatures.
All that shipping and freezing requires a level of technical sophistication that, for now at least, mostly exists in hospitals and labs—posing significant logistical challenges in rural areas and in the developing world. These are the "cold chain" problems that Koff mentioned, the problem of refrigerated shipping. (A critical Ebola vaccine needs the same deep freeze, and engineers stepped up to create specialized coolers to transport it across western Africa—but that was a pandemic that affected tens of thousands of people, not billions, and the people who made the coolers have since gotten out of the cold-chain innovation game.)
https://www.wired.com/story/well-need-more-than-one-vaccine-to-beat-the-pandemic/
All that shipping and freezing requires a level of technical sophistication that, for now at least, mostly exists in hospitals and labs—posing significant logistical challenges in rural areas and in the developing world. These are the "cold chain" problems that Koff mentioned, the problem of refrigerated shipping. (A critical Ebola vaccine needs the same deep freeze, and engineers stepped up to create specialized coolers to transport it across western Africa—but that was a pandemic that affected tens of thousands of people, not billions, and the people who made the coolers have since gotten out of the cold-chain innovation game.)
https://www.wired.com/story/well-need-more-than-one-vaccine-to-beat-the-pandemic/
No comments:
Post a Comment