The good results of the completed tests of the vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech against Covid-19, announced this Wednesday (18), will face an unprecedented challenge: the storage and distribution of a vaccine immunization with two doses in an interval of 21 days at -70 ° Ç.
In Brazil, there are currently no deep-freezers for this in the country's Brazilian National Immunization Program.
Today, the standard for vaccine maintenance in the world is done in refrigerators, with temperatures ranging between 2° C and 8° C. That's what we find in homemade refrigerators.
Immunizations against yellow fever and polio require storage at lower temperatures (-15ºC to -25ºC) in equipment such as scientific freezers. Before being administered, the two vaccines migrate to the "standard" temperature of the refrigerators, 2° C and 8° C, where they can stay for up to a month.
Pfizer's vaccine against Covid-19, called BNT162b2, lasts only five days at the standard refrigeration temperature.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon