Livestock infra could provide -70°C storage for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine

India’s livestock and agriculture research agencies, not the public health network, may have a solution to create storage facilities for Pfizer and BioNTech’s mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine, which requires -70°C temperature for long term storage. The vaccine has proven to be effective in preventing Covid-19 and has become the first inoculation to be approved for emergency use in several countries after large-scale testing. But it requires the lowest temperature among all vaccine options for long-term storage. A second vaccine based on the same mRNA platform, developed by Moderna, can be stored at -20°C, a requirement that India’s health infrastructure can easily meet.

A senior official involved in India’s coronavirus vaccination plans said: “National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal have refrigerators that can meet Pfizer’s requirements. Similarly, Indian Agriculture Research Institute (ICAR) too has the capacity.” The NDRI, a wing of the ICAR, has two stations in Bengaluru and West Bengal’s Kalyani. “These stations too have similar facilities and can be used as potential hubs for southern India and eastern India,” added the official, asking not to be named.

Dr Ajay Dang, the public relations officer of NDRI, told HT, “We have cold storages with (capacity) up to -80°C. These storages are used for storing embryo and semen samples of animals. We have been contributing to combat the pandemic by supplying RT-PCR kits to the health ministry.”

Another official said that ICAR has already collected information about its cold storage capabilities — overall, and not just specific to Pfizer — and has sent it to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). But the question of using NDRI or ICAR facilities will come only if Pfizer is able to secure emergency authorisation from Indian drug regulators. The subject expert committee of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation or CDSCO had asked Pfizer to present its case last week, but the vaccine maker sought more time to formally submit its papers for an emergency authorisation.

HT reported on December 7 that central authorities will sit down with Pfizer to negotiate pricing and also scrutinise the US-based company’s ability to deliver orders placed by the country. The vaccine costs 5-6 times more than the candidate developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca, which is being manufactured locally in India by the Serum Institute of India (SII).

ICAR has stations and centres in Indore, Kalimpong, Karnal, Pune, Pusa (Bihar), Shimla, Katrin (Himachal Pradesh) and Wellington (Tamil Nadu). It has two regional centres at Tamil Nadu’s Aduthurai and Karnataka’s Dharwad. All these centres can also be used as storage bases, the first official said.

Within Union health ministry’s internal resources, super coolers such as walk-in-freezers and its mini deep freezers version offer a temperature range of -15°C to -25°C. While Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine requires ultra-cold temperature for long term storage, delivering the vaccine to inoculation points is relatively easier. “The vaccine can be stored for five days at refrigerated 2-8°C conditions,” the company said in a recent statement

“After storage for up to 30 days in the Pfizer thermal shipper (its own cold box), vaccination centres can transfer the vials to 2-8°C storage conditions for an additional five days, for a total of up to 35 days. Once thawed and stored under 2-8°C conditions, the vials cannot be re-frozen or stored under frozen conditions,” the company added.

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Source: The article is extracted from the Hindustan Times, December 20, 2020.