Moderna and Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine candidates require ultra-low temperatures, raising questions

[nitpicker]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moderna-and-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-require-ultra-low-temperatures-raising-questions-about-storage-distribution-2020-08-27?mod=home-page

Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine candidates require ultra-low temperatures, raising questions about storage, distribution
Published: Aug. 27, 2020 at 3:07 p.m. ET
By Jaimy Lee

The COVID-19 vaccine candidates being developed by Moderna Inc. and BioNTech and Pfizer Inc. will require stringent standards for refrigeration, and that may hamper how they are distributed to the hundreds of millions of Americans expecting to receive them.
(snip)

Executives from Moderna and Pfizer on Wednesday separately told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice on Wednesday that mRNA-1273, which is Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine candidate, requires a storage temperature of negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit. BioNTech and Pfizer’s candidates, BN1162b2 and BNT162b2, need to be stored in negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit.
(snip)

Dr. Kathleen Dooling, a medical officer for the agency’s division of viral diseases, said Wednesday that storage, distribution, and handling requirements of these vaccines “will make it very difficult for community clinics and local pharmacies to store and administer.” She also noted that most vaccines will have to be “administered at centralized sites with adequate equipment and high throughput.”

Pfizer will need to use ultralow temperature freezers and thermal shipper storage for its COVID-19 vaccine candidates, according to comments made by Dr. Nicholas Kitchin, senior director of Pfizer’s vaccine clinical research and development group.

The vaccines being developed by Moderna, BioNTech, and Pfizer are mRNA vaccines; however, other types of vaccines require less intense rules around storage. Concern about the difficulties of storing and shipping mMRNA COVID-19 vaccines to hundreds of millions of people could put the makers of these candidates at a competitive disadvantage, analysts say. It may also separate Moderna’s vaccine from the ones being developed by BioNTech and Pfizer.

There are about half a dozen COVID-19 vaccine candidates in clinical trials in the U.S. However, not all of them are mRNA vaccines. The vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca AZN, -1.56% AZN, -2.11% and the University of Oxford is a recombinant viral vector vaccine, for example, while Inovio Pharmaceutical Inc.’s INO, -7.22% candidate is DNA-based.
(snip)

[The Magistrate]

1. The Devil Is Always In The Details, Sir

"Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics."

[riversedge]

2. This is not good.

[marybourg]

3. There still may be a use for them, for people who can't

tolerate the classic vaccines.

[intrepidity]

4. I wonder why?

What in it is so unstable? And what happens when it is suddenly exposed to body temp? If it must stimulate an immune response, I suppose it'd better do it damn quick before the high temp destroys it.

[underpants]

5. Distribution has always been a worry. I know someone in logistics

who tells me the big boys are already planning for this but they can’t buy that many “reefer” trucks yet and sit on them. Every delivery to each, let’s say, hospital (let alone drugstores) will mean a lot of refrigerated trucks. We’re talking getting two doses to within 5 miles of every single person in this country. Tapping into seafood distribution is being considered from what I’m told. Still that’s a lot of stops.