BOSTON (CBS) – Nearly 2,000 doses of Modern COVID-19 vaccine have been compromised at VA Medical Center in the Jamaican Plain after a freezer failed.
Earlier this week, a contractor accidentally unplugged the freezer while cleaning after a pipe burst and flooded the room where the vaccines were stored. As a result, 1,900 doses of vaccine were compromised.
“It is 12 hours for the Moderna vaccine. Once it has been at room temperature for a long time, you can no longer make sure it is effective and therefore you cannot administer the vaccine, ”Dr. Paul Biddinger, medical director for emergency training at WBZ-TV, told WBZ-TV. General Brigham.
Kyle Toto, a spokesman for VA Boston Healthcare System, told WBZ that the vaccines were not discarded.
Toto said the freezer was in a safe place and had an alarm system installed. An investigation is underway to determine why the monitoring and alarm system did not work.
“Replenishment doses are in the process and we do not anticipate discontinuing our vaccination efforts,” Toto said.
Dr. Biddinger said proper storage is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the key element in the vaccine and is a general success against the virus.
“The problem is that messenger RNA, mRNA, is very fragile. People have made the analogy of a M&M that melts very, very fast. ”
Massachusetts spokesman Stephen Lynch said the doses had been moved to Brockton and West Roxbury while the clean-up operation was still ongoing.
“We just think it was an accident,” Lynch told reporters on Friday. “Part of the contributing factor was how these outlets work. One of them is an offset, so it is very difficult to get out. But the one at the top of the freezer was a direct traction, so the engineering staff here corrected that. They created a parenthesis, took photos with that plug, and sent it to all the other hospitals in VA that have this thermo-scientific freezer, so that could happen elsewhere. ”