Some ineffective vaccines were administered on February 15 at the New York state Jones Beach vaccination site, the state Department of Health released on Monday.
Spokeswoman Jill Montag said “there was no health risk” when receiving ineffective injections “, an extremely small number of individuals [were] impacted, “and those appointments will be rescheduled.
“The health and safety of New Yorkers is our highest priority and, due to the very specific temperature sensitivity of this vaccine, we have a process in place to identify if any temperature variations occur,” she wrote by email. “This process worked, allowing us to quickly locate this problem, identify the extremely small number of individuals affected and start taking action immediately.”
She did not reveal the number of people affected or explain what caused the injections to have the wrong temperature or how the error was discovered. Nor did the state name the batch numbers of the affected vaccines.
The two vaccines approved in the United States – by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – require extra refrigerated storage. The state did not say which of the two was given on February 15.
An employee who answered the phone Monday afternoon on the state’s vaccine line, 833-NYS-4-VAX, said she and her colleagues know what is being reported in the press.
“The only thing we have now is what they say on the news,” she said, adding, “People have been calling and then we get the news and then we know that what people were saying was real.”
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