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On December 28, AIFA, the Italian Medicines Agency, confirmed that from each vial of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus it will be possible to obtain six doses, that is, one more than previously expected and indicated by the manufacturer. This will be possible by taking advantage of the amount of “residual” vaccine, which remains available in each vial after having obtained five doses, following a procedure approved in recent days by the FDA, the US agency that deals with drugs.
The vials supplied by Pfizer should be diluted with water and sodium chloride (the physiological solution), to normally obtain 5 doses containing 0.3 milliliters of vaccine each, to inject. Using the system recommended by AIFA, the dose of 0.3 ml of vaccine can be guaranteed for each administration, but one more can be obtained using precision syringes that avoid the waste of the “residual” vaccine.
This system should allow Italy to have up to 20 percent more doses of the vaccine than expected. Since the start of the vaccination campaign these days in September 2021, the delivery of 27 million doses was expected, which can now become 32 million.
The operation cannot be done with normal syringes: the FDA document says that “if you use standard syringes and needles, there may not be enough volume left to draw a sixth dose from the single vial.” Therefore, precision syringes are needed, which allow the exact amount of liquid needed to be drawn from the vials using the “residual vaccine”.
The special syringes chosen by the extraordinary commissioner for the COVID-19 emergency Domenico Arcuri are of the “Luer Lock” type, and in recent weeks they had been at the center of a controversy after several newspapers reported their higher than normal cost however, suitable for the administration of vaccines. Arcuri had championed the option of ordering them, anticipating that they could allow significantly more use of the available vaccine vials.
Yesterday the Ministry of the Interior sent the prefects the instructions to follow so that, with the use of the police and carabinieri, the escorts for the transfers and surveillance of vaccines are organized at administration points throughout Italy. If necessary, as happened in Rome with the arrival of the first 9,750 doses later distributed to the regions, the prefects will convene the provincial committees of public order and security to organize the services. After arriving at the Pratica di Mare air base, in the municipality of Pomezia, in the metropolitan area of Rome, they will be transported by the army to the 21 collection centers, one in each region and in the autonomous provinces, from where then they will be distributed, under the coordination of the prefects in the 300 administration points.
The arrival in Italy of the first 470 thousand doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus (which may now be 564 thousand), after the 9,750 sent in recent days for the “symbolic” vaccination day of December 27, it was scheduled for Monday afternoon. but due to bad weather it was postponed to Tuesday morning. This first supply will give the effective start of the vaccination campaign to which the health workers will be subjected first, followed by the guests of the RSA, the nursing homes.
Starting on December 29 of each week, until March 2021, a supply equivalent to this point of 564 thousand doses will arrive in Italy, that is, the previous 470 thousand with the extra dose for each vial. In total, 7.8 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were expected to arrive in the first quarter of the new year, which today could be 9.3 million, in addition to the others that will be approved by the European Commission.
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