Update: While state officials initially said the doses would be thrown out, at 4:18 PM, nearly three hours after this story was published, Vermont Department of Health spokesman Ben Truman said with Moderna discussing whether the doses are in fact still possible, are used. Seven days will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
The state of Vermont will discard 860 doses of COVID-19 vaccine – nearly 1 percent of all doses received to date – because of a storage problem at Springfield Hospital, officials said Wednesday.
Doses of the Moderna vaccine had apparently been kept slightly above the maximum allowable temperature, prompting the manufacturer to discard them due to concerns about their viability, Human Services Secretary Mike Smith said at a regularly scheduled press conference.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Moderna vaccine vials should be refrigerated at temperatures between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius.
“It was 9 degrees at Springfield Hospital,” said Smith.
“I don’t have all the details,” he went on, seeming to read a statement sent to him via text message minutes earlier. “This is unfortunate because we’ve had minimal – I mean minimal – wasted doses in this condition.”
Vermont had lost fewer than 30 vaccine doses since last week, said Health Commissioner Mark Levine. The newly revealed corruption represents a much more important piece.
The spoilage announcement was apparently news to Springfield Hospital officials, who were awaiting guidance from the Vermont Department of Health when Smith revealed the doses should be thrown away.
Anna Smith, the hospital’s vice president of marketing and development, said Seven days that the hospital’s pharmacy had called the health department on Tuesday to confirm the temperature readings, which led to the discovery of a “discrepancy.”
“Our equipment said it was in range, but the equipment that recorded it at the state level read something else,” she said.
State officials called Springfield Wednesday morning and told them to cancel a vaccination clinic scheduled to start in 30 minutes, Smith said. She could not confirm who was set to receive shots. Vermont opened vaccination clinics on Wednesday for people 75 and older.
The doses had not been discarded from noon. “We are waiting to hear [the health department] right now, ”Smith said, minutes after the press conference.
Shortly after 1:00 pm, the hospital issued a statement saying it had canceled the clinic “out of great caution” due to the discrepancy in the temperature readings.
“Two hospital monitors registered the temperature within an acceptable range, and the Vermont state monitor registered 0.1 degrees above the range,” the statement said.
Levine said the state has “excellent” sensors on refrigeration equipment to identify any problems. “With any kind of major vaccination program, these things happen,” he said.
Levine said the state was drawing up plans to ensure that the affected individuals’ vaccinations are rescheduled soon. About 400 of the wasted doses were set up for use as a second injection in the Moderna two dose vaccination regimen.
Nearly 900 doses have been wasted from the 96,825 received by the state. “That’s still not a high percentage,” Levine said.