The country must be prepared to handle the storage of COVID-19 vaccines, House Deputy Speaker Surigao del Sur Rep. Johnny Pimentel said Sunday.
Pimentel underscored the need to keep such vaccines at low temperatures during storage or else their efficacy might get compromised.
“The vaccination of an initial batch of 35 million Filipinos is bound to call for the mobilization of a wide-range of cold storage assets – from temperature-controlled refrigerated trucking services to ample supplies of dry ice. The logistical challenge is enormous, considering that everybody will need two shots of the vaccine at an interval of 19 to 42 days," said Pimentel, a COVID-19 survivor.
He noted that the most promising COVID-19 vaccine is reputed to be 95 percent effective, but has to be stored in ultra-low temperature packed in dry ice.
American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., which jointly developed the vaccine with German biotech firm BioNTech SE, has designed distribution containers that can keep the shots at the required temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius for 10 days if unopened.
The distribution containers can also be used for temporary storage in a vaccination facility, such as a hospital, for up to 30 days as long as they are reloaded with dry ice every five days. Once thawed, the vaccines can be stored in a refrigerator at two to eight degrees Celsius for up to five days.
As such, Pimentel said the COVID-19 immunization campaign in country will require the comprehensive listing of all available cold chain logistics solutions that can be marshaled to rapidly deploy the vaccines.
“This early, we would expect our Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases to make an inventory of all obtainable cold storage provisions, including those held by private firms, that can be harnessed to deliver the vaccines across the country without delay,” he said.
“We have to be geared up to cope, if we want to swiftly vaccinate millions of Filipinos, especially the most vulnerable ones such as our healthcare workers, those aged 65-years-old and above and those with underlying ailments,” added the solon, who also serves as Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban) spokesman.
At present, the Department of Health (DoH) has only one bulk cold storage facility at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa City.
While the DoH has a long-term plan to put up regional cold storage warehouses as part of its modern supply chain for temperature-sensitive medical supplies, Pimentel expressed concern that the facilities may not be built in time for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
“We may have to rely on cold chain solutions that are already available,” he said.
The United Kingdom on Dec. 2 became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use in a COVID-19 public inoculation program. The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to consider on Dec. 10 the possible approval of the same vaccine for emergency use in America.