BOSTON (CBS) – Nearly 2,000 doses of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine were compromised at the VA Medical Center in Jamaica Plain after a freezer failed.
Earlier this week, a contractor accidentally turned off the freezer while cleaning, after a pipe burst and flooded the room where the vaccines were stored. As a result, 1,900 doses of the vaccine were compromised.
“For the Modern vaccine, it’s 12 hours. Once you are at room temperature for a longer time, you can no longer guarantee that it is effective and therefore cannot give the vaccine, ”said Dr. Paul Biddinger, Medical Director for Emergency Preparedness at Mass General Brigham, to WBZ -TV.
Kyle Toto, a spokesman for the 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.
“Replacement doses are in progress and we do not anticipate interrupting our vaccination effort,” said Toto.
Dr. Biddinger said that proper storage is crucial to maintaining the integrity of the vaccine’s key element and is the overall success against the virus.
“The problem is that the messenger RNA, the mRNA, is very fragile. People kind of made the analogy of an M&M that melts very, very fast. “
Massachusetts deputy Stephen Lynch said the doses were moved to Brockton and West Roxbury while the cleanup operation is still ongoing.
“We just believe it was an accident,” Lynch told reporters on Friday. “Part of the contributing factor was the way these plugs work. One is a displacement, so it is very difficult to pull. But what was on top of the freezer was a direct draw, so the engineering team here corrected that. They created a support, took photos of that plug and sent it to all the other VA hospitals that have this thermo-scientific freezer so that, if it happens elsewhere. “