Nearly 2,000 doses of a COVID-19 vaccine was tainted at a Boston Veterans Affairs hospital after a contractor accidentally unplugged a freezer, hospital officials announced Thursday. Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center staff discovered on Tuesday that a freezer broke, compromising 1,900 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
According to a statement by Kyle Toto, a VA Boston Healthcare System spokesperson, the freezer’s plug was found to be loose after a contractor accidentally unplugged it while cleaning. The freezer had been in a secure location and had an alarm system, he said.
Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines require extremely cold temperatures for storage.
“For the Moderna vaccine, it is 12 hours. Once it has been at room temperature for longer, you can no longer assure that it is effective and so you cannot give the vaccine,” says Dr. Paul Biddinger, the emergency preparedness medical director at Mass General Brigham, told CBS Boston.
The system investigates the cause of the incident and why the surveillance alarm system was not working. More doses are underway, Toto said, and officials “foresee no disruption” to the system’s vaccination efforts.
Temperature issues have caused problems with vaccine rollout in other states.
Nearly 12,000 Moderna doses shipped to Michigan on Sunday were spoiled after getting too cold. In Wisconsin, one pharmacist is faced with costs after authorities say he intentionally messed up hundreds of doses by taking them out of the fridge for two nights.
The Moderna vaccine should be stored at normal freezing temperatures, but not the ultra-cold required for Pfizer-BioNTech uptake.
CBS Boston reports Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch said the doses have been moved to Brockton and West Roxbury while the clean-up operation is still ongoing.
“We just think it was an accident,” Lynch told reporters on Friday. “Part of the contributing factor was the way these plugs work. One of them is an offset, so it’s very difficult to pull out. But the one at the top of the freezer was a direct pull, so the tech staff here has “Corrected that. They made a hook, they took pictures of that plug and sent it to all the other VA hospitals that have this thermo-science freezer, so in case it happened elsewhere.”