LAHORE: The Punjab government has decided to procure 120 special refrigerators to store Pfizer and Moderna vaccines since only five districts of the province have the required cold storage facility that meets the standards approved by the World Health Organization, a senior official involved in the province’s vaccination drive told Arab News on Friday.
“We have placed an order for 120 Iceland Refrigerators,” said Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, spokesperson for the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Punjab. “However, the procurement process can take about two to three months.”
He informed that there were only five “ultracold storage units” for Pfizer and Moderna in major urban centers like Lahore, Faisalabad and Gujranwala etc.
Asked about the vaccine wastage in the province due to insufficient cold storage facilities, he only admitted to “open vial wastage” in which left-over doses are discarded if they are not administered within six hours after the vial is opened.
According to media reports, more than 38,000 doses of vaccine had gone to a waste in Punjab. However, a health department official recently told a local news outlet that the figure summed up the wastage of the last five months which amounted to 0.37 percent of the total supply and was considered normal.
The EPI national program manager, Dr. Akram Shah, also confirmed insufficient number of ultracold storage units in the province.
“There are two types of vaccines in the country which are being administered to people,” he said. “Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino require two to eight degrees Celsius while vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna need minus 18 degrees Celsius.”
He also informed that there were only 15 ultracold storage units in the entire country, three of them in Islamabad, two in Karachi and one each in Swat, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Lahore and Hyderabad.
“We are likely to face similar problem with Sputnik V,” he said. “In fact, the Russian vaccine is unique since it requires minus 18 degrees Celsius right from the time of its manufacturing until it is administration to people.”
Shah confirmed that another batch of 100,000 Sputnik V shots was expected to arrive in Pakistan on July 10.
“Twenty ultracold storage units are also likely to reach the country on July 12,” he added while confirming that they would be installed in the same urban centers which already have the required storage facilities.
The EPI official also attributed the wastage of over 38,000 doses to the same technical reason.
“One vial normally contains 11 to 15 doses of vaccine,” Shah said. “Once it is opened, it needs to be used within six to 12 hours. We cannot make people wait until a sufficiently large crowd gathers at the vaccine center before opening a vial. Therefore, such wastage is a routine matter.”