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The Pfizer-BioNtech vaccines against covid-19 that will arrive in the UK from next week, and probably the first to arrive in Portugal as a result of this collaboration, should be frozen, at minus 70 degrees Celsius, from the factory of Puurs. in Belgium, a small city with several pharmaceutical industries and famous for its high alcohol content (Duvel), about 25 kilometers from Brussels and Antwerp. But you have to be very sober to win the challenge of maintaining the cold chain of the first immunization against the new coronavirus.
During the transport of the vaccine developed by the German biotechnology company BioNtech, it must be kept at a temperature that can vary up to ten degrees: between 60 and 80 degrees Celsius less, the ideal value being minus 70 degrees. To keep them that way, the vials containing the vaccine doses – each vial contains five doses, in fact, which will have to be diluted when they arrive at the vaccination center – are placed inside with dry ice inside boxes designed to withstand environments and temperatures. . extreme, from the South Pole to the warmest deserts on Earth.
The boxes developed by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to transport vaccines in ultra-cold conditions can carry 1,000 or 500 doses of vaccines. They are filled with dry ice and therefore shipped from the factory to the world, for customers who have already purchased 570 million doses. The first 50 million doses are ready for the first customers, said Sean Marett, business manager at German biotech company BioNtech, who developed the vaccine that Pfizer will bring to market.
Maia’s Portuguese company APP Thermal also produces similar boxes and has experience working with Pfizer and shipping vaccines. With its Argentine partner and Pfizer in that South American country, the Portuguese company has developed boxes that will be used to transport BioNtech-Pfizer’s demanding covid-19 vaccine to vaccination centers in Argentina, and hopes that they will be approved. for the same purpose in Portugal.
There are boxes of various sizes, for example XL (1560 vials), where doses of vaccines can be stored for 72 hours or more. This if the tests that are now underway confirm it, explains Linda Santos, project manager at APP Thermal.
“The boxes have an aluminum compound, which does not allow reflections, neither from light nor from heat,” explains Linda Santos. It is this material that allows thermal insulation. The vaccine box goes directly to the heart of the container, which is filled with dry ice, and along with this order is a device, with sensors, that monitors the temperature and conditions of the box and transmits the information in real time through from GPS, to a control center.
The BioNtech-Pfizer vaccine, which is the first based on messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, does not use any part of the new coronavirus. What you use is a molecule that contains the instructions for our cells to produce the protein found on the surface of the virus, the spike, which gives it the characteristic thorn-like appearance. But the spike is not contagious. The goal is simply to use that molecule (the mRNA) to train our immune system to recognize an enemy, as if distributing robot portraits of it.
These vaccines are faster to produce than flu vaccines because they are not grown in eggs. It is our cells that use the instructions from the mRNA to make the spike protein, which trains our immune system against the virus. The problem is that mRNA is an unstable molecule that breaks down into smaller components. Keeping it at ultra-cold temperatures allows it to stabilize.
That is why all the care put into the long-term transport and storage of BioNtech-Pfizer vaccines and, by the way, also that of Moderna, which is based on the same technology, but ensures that it can stabilize the vaccine at minus 20 degrees Celsius .
However, at a press conference on Wednesday, BioNtech explained that its vaccine could be kept in the vaccination centers in these special boxes for 20 days. If they need to be opened to replace the ice, they can only last 15 days. In a normal refrigerator, however, with temperatures between two and eight degrees Celsius, they will not last more than five days.
“If you take the box of vaccines at negative 70 degrees to a health center, you can win days later: Pfizer says you can stay another five days at temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees”, exemplifies Manuel Pizarro, administrator. by APP Thermal.
The Portuguese company that hopes to sell its boxes to Pfizer is now testing its products in a chamber where it can simulate various environmental conditions and temperatures, with the Smartcae artificial intelligence program. “If something goes out of the temperature range, logistics entities can take corrective actions, avoid waste and control the administration of vaccines,” adds Pizarro.
These experiments allow us to predict that, under certain environmental conditions, and for transports of a certain duration (and for orders of a certain volume), it may be necessary to reinforce the dry ice at a certain height. For example, at 11 p.m., on a 24-hour trip to the vaccination center, to ensure the integrity of the vaccines.
