Nearly 2,000 doses of COVID-19 Moderna vaccine were tampered with in a Boston area unit after a cleaning contractor accidentally loosened a stopper for a freezer, according to a report.
The images were discovered Tuesday by VA Boston Pharmacy staff. At least 1,900 doses have been compromised, Kyle Toto, a spokesman for the Boston Boston Healthcare System, told the Boston Globe.
“The plug was found loose after a contractor accidentally removed it during cleaning,” Toto said.
He added that he did not believe the altered doses would affect the launch of the vaccine and told the newspaper that the replacement doses were already delivered.
Modern COVID-19 vaccines – as well as the doses developed by rival Pfizer-BioNTech – must be kept at very low temperatures, between 13 and 5 degrees Fahrenheit. To maintain this temperature, the storage facilities at Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center were equipped with alarms designed to trigger if the doses get hot or too cold, although they did not ring when the freezer was switched off.
Toto said he’s not sure why the alarm didn’t go off.
“An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the incident and why the monitoring and alarm system did not work as expected,” he said.
Massachusetts has recorded a total of 462,910 cases of coronavirus and 13,622 deaths caused by COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic last year, according to the state Department of Public Health.