A broken freezer with more than 1,600 COVID-19 vaccine doses could have been catastrophic. Instead, quick thinking and bold action turned a disaster into a bit of a Seattle miracle. When it became clear that Moderna’s doses would soon expire, two clinics split the doses and sent the nighttime call to the guns, as it were.
In the end, every dose was used and more than 1,600 happy Seattle residents were ahead of the vaccination curve:
Hundreds of people rushed to the clinics of the University of Seattle and the University of Washington late Thursday night to try and get a COVID-19 vaccine before doses expired.
Spokespeople for both Sweden and UW said a freezer containing Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine broke at Kaiser Permanente, threatening to expire 1,650 doses of the vaccine.
Swedish and UW divided the doses and began to administer them.
“The teams worked closely throughout the night and early morning and worked closely to ensure that all doses were used and that no vaccination was lost,” said a representative from Kaiser Permanente Washington.
Given the highly regulated environment in which this effort took place, this quick thinking and agile action is all the more impressive. We’ve already heard stories of doses spoiling, either accidentally or under more suspicious circumstances, and we should at least expect the first kind of hiccups to occur occasionally. Normally, the regulations and penalties for violating them would have thrown the doses in the trash, as this early stage of vaccinations doesn’t exactly reward thinking outside the box.
As more than one person on Twitter noted, Andrew Cuomo’s draconian penalties for vaccination outside of his rigid regime would never have resulted in this kind of unconditional circumvention. Hundreds of people would never have received these doses. Instead, Seattle caregivers, given room for innovation and creative thinking, turned a failure into a thrilling success, all between 11 p.m. and 2:30 a.m.
The men and women who have taken these steps to protect their communities and get the most out of every dose of those endangered doses deserve credit. Let’s hope we start seeing enough of these doses soon so that we don’t have to stick to the rigid distribution models in the first place.
Addendum: Also note where this took place – in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. That’s where anarchists seized several blocks of the city in June and created the CHAZ – Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. Imagine if the city still tolerated that when this happened. Innovation and creativity require public order and stability, as well as room to make quick decisions without draconian sanctions.