The freezer holding a Northern California county’s entire allotment of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine suffered a power outage Monday, forcing officials to distribute all 830 doses on an emergency basis before the vaccine thawed. That would have made it ineffective.
The Mendocino Voice was first to report on the development.
Judson Howe, president of Adventist Health in Mendocino County, confirmed to CBS News that the power failure was discovered at about 11:35 a.m. in the Adventist Health Ukiah Valley Medical Center in the city of Ukiah. An alarm designed to alert staff to any outages didn’t work, so the vaccine either had started to thaw or could have thawed.
The hospital got the word out about the sudden pending distribution and called in staffers to give the shots.
A line quickly formed at the medical center. According to the Voice, it consisted of patients and people who’d heard about the opportunity by word of mouth.
The shots were administered within two hours and some people had to leave without getting one, the Voice reported.
Dr. Bessant Parker, chief medical officer for Adventist Health in Mendocino County, told the Voice the vaccine was also administered in some nursing homes.
The Moderna vaccine has been shown to have an efficacy of over 94%, similar to the one made by Pfizer.
They’re the only vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration so far for use in the U.S., on an emergency basis.
But unlike Pfizer’s, which must be shipped and stored at ultra-cold temperatures, Moderna’s can be kept at standard freezer temperatures.
Both require two doses.
Source: Read Full Article