Shipping the vaccine will be a daunting task. Here is the process of shipping them.
- The vaccine is shipped to its destination country in special containers packed with dry ice called thermal shippers. The shippers can hold anywhere from 975 to 5,000 doses. Unopened, the shippers can maintain the necessary temperature for 10 days.
- When the shippers reach their destination country, the vaccines can be taken out and stored in ultra-could freezers at around -70 C (-94 F) for up to six months. Ultra-low temperatures freezers can hold as many as 200,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.
- Once the vaccines are removed from those freezers and put back into the thermal sippers, the dry ice must be replenished every five days, for up to 30 days. The shippers can only be opened twice a day, each time for no more than a minute.
- The vaccine can be moved to a refrigerator for storage at 2-8 C (36-46 F), but they must be used within five days. Once thawed, each vial of vaccine is diluted to make five doses. Those five shots must be administered within six hours. After six hours, if they have not been used, the vaccines must be thrown out.
The first shipments of the vaccine departed a Pfizer plant in Michigan on Sunday morning. A total of 189 boxes of vials are expected to arrive in all 50 states Monday. Another 3,900 vials are expected to ship later Sunday to US territories. Another 400 boxes packed with about 390,000 vials are expected to ship Monday and arrive at their destinations on Tuesday.
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