As we are amid the coronavirus pandemic, the race to vaccine grows harsher! Some countries say they are ready to move to mass vaccination and orders have been placed. Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is said to be 95% effective, but unlike Moderna’s, it has a major logistical flaw, it must be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112°F). Olivier Véran announced last week that France is getting ready to vaccinate the population and therefore ordered refrigerators to carry and store these vaccines.
Yet, aware of the difficulties carrying and storing a vaccine that has to respect the -80°C cold chain all along the conveyance and all the way to the vaccination center, Pfizer has announced they were working on a “powder” format of the product enabling to dramatically cut off logistical costs.
Pfizer’s chief scientist Mikael Dolsten told Business Insider: “We are thinking about a few possibilities for next-generation vaccines […] I think we'll roll out next year a vaccine in powder format”.
As Europe already ordered over 300 million doses of the experimental vaccine proposed by the two pharmaceutical groups, Anne Hidalgo announces Paris is soon to be fitted with five major vaccination centers enabling to inoculate the selected product to “30 to 40%” of the population “starting January”, starting with “vulnerable” individuals.
