(Newser)
– About 500 doses of the precious vaccine against the modern coronavirus were discarded at a clinic in Wisconsin after an “unintended human error”. Fifty vials, each containing 10 doses of the vaccine, were removed from a refrigerator at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, on Friday so that a person could access other items inside the refrigerator, according to with a statement from lawyer Aurora Saúde, for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The bottles were not returned to the refrigerator. The error was noticed before 12 hours passed, which means that some doses of the vaccine could still be administered. But most had to be discarded on Saturday, as the vaccine cannot stay at room temperature any longer than that.
The Modern vaccine is shipped frozen and, once thawed, the vials can be stored in the refrigerator (at temperatures between 36 degrees Fahrenheit and 46 degrees Fahrenheit) for up to 30 days. “We are clearly disappointed and we are sorry that this happened,” said officials at Advocate Aurora Health, which vaccinated about 17,000 of its employees in the past two weeks, according to the Journal Sentinel. Earlier this month, the Albuquerque Journal reported that a shipment of 75 doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine had to be discarded in New Mexico “after a digital device showed that it was overheated during transport to a hospital in Clayton”. A spokeswoman for Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said it was “probably a malfunction of the digital data logger”. (Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)