Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 Vaccine Just Got a Lot Easier to Distribute (techcrunch.com) 67
Pfizer and BioNTech "have asked the U.S. health regulator to relax requirements for their COVID-19 vaccine to be stored at ultra-low temperatures, potentially allowing it to be kept in pharmacy freezers," reports Reuters, which adds that approval "could send a strong signal to other regulators around the world that may ease distribution of the shot in lower-income countries."
Slashdot reader FrankOVD shares more information from TechCrunch: Originally, the mRNA-based vaccine had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures throughout the transportation chain in order to remain viable — between -76F and -112F... To date, the vaccine has relied largely on existing "cold-chain" infrastructure to be in place in order for it to be able to reach the areas where it's being used to inoculate patients... This development is just one example of how work continues on the vaccines that are already being deployed under emergency approvals by health regulators across the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Pfizer and BioNTech say they're working on bringing those storage temp requirements down even further, so they could potentially approach the standard set by the Moderna jab....
The new requirements open up participation to a whole host of potential new players in supporting delivery and distribution — including ride-hailing and on-demand delivery players with large networks like Amazon, which has offered President Biden's administration its support, and Uber, which is already teamed up with Moderna on vaccine education programs. This also opens the door for participation from a range of startups and smaller companies in both the logistics and the care delivery space that don't have the scale or the specialized equipment to be able to offer extreme "cold-chain" storage.
Slashdot reader FrankOVD shares more information from TechCrunch: Originally, the mRNA-based vaccine had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures throughout the transportation chain in order to remain viable — between -76F and -112F... To date, the vaccine has relied largely on existing "cold-chain" infrastructure to be in place in order for it to be able to reach the areas where it's being used to inoculate patients... This development is just one example of how work continues on the vaccines that are already being deployed under emergency approvals by health regulators across the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Pfizer and BioNTech say they're working on bringing those storage temp requirements down even further, so they could potentially approach the standard set by the Moderna jab....
The new requirements open up participation to a whole host of potential new players in supporting delivery and distribution — including ride-hailing and on-demand delivery players with large networks like Amazon, which has offered President Biden's administration its support, and Uber, which is already teamed up with Moderna on vaccine education programs. This also opens the door for participation from a range of startups and smaller companies in both the logistics and the care delivery space that don't have the scale or the specialized equipment to be able to offer extreme "cold-chain" storage.
Prime results. (Score:2)
So if I get Prime will I get a better deal?
makes sense (Score:2)
moderna is using the same technology and the vaccine can be stored at normal freezer temperatures
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from https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
ModeRNA spokesperson Colleen Hussey explained to NPR in an email that its vaccine doesn't need to be kept so cold because of its particular "lipid nanoparticle properties and structure," and because the company has learned from experience — it's developed ten mRNA vaccine candidates already. "Now we do
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Not quite the same technology. Each has a proprietary lipid coating for the mRNA.
What I am really looking forward to is approval of freeze-dried vaccines. Ctrl-F to "lyophilization" in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] for just how spectacular a difference it makes to the logistics.
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So the reason why we can't ship Pfizer's COVID vaccines more efficiently and possibly save more people is... patents. Sad trombone.
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That's not really true. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna both have patented technology, and existing production chains. Particular steps in those chains are highly customized to their specific encapsulation tech, and those steps are most likely the bottlenecks. Specifically, getting the mRNA into the lipid carriers is apparently quite finicky, and is thought to require a bunch of very highly specialized microfluidics ("micro" being the operative word there).
If the technology wasn't patented Pfizer couldn't just
Source (Score:2)
Just wanted to point a nice source about this subject by Derek Lowe [sciencemag.org]
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Thanks! That's exactly the article I was thinking of when I posted but I was on my phone. Thanks for looking up the link.
If anybody is interested in this stuff, the rest of his articles, COVID-related and otherwise, are well worth reading too.
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Distribution isn't the bottleneck (Score:3)
While this is good news, distribution isn't the bottleneck, production is.
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The really good news though is that the Pfizer vaccine is over 90% effective after just one dose. That would double availability if protocol was changed to get everyone (or at least those who want it) at least one dose first.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
Although in my neck of the conservative woods many of my fellow citizens believe that the vaccine kills and the virus is a hoax
Re: Distribution isn't the bottleneck (Score:2)
Although in my neck of the conservative woods That's no neck of the woods, it's half the goddamn first world. Fragmented, atomised and each hating anything the other.
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Nothing about the US is a third world country
There are sections of Baltimore, Oakland, Detroit, etc. that would make you reconsider leaving Bosnia in the 90s.
There are certainly parts of the U.S. that are as bad or worse for their residents than many third-world countries. Be thankful you've never had to encounter them, but don't fool yourself into thinking they don't exist.
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You mean people like Robert Kennedy Jr?
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The really good news though is that the Pfizer vaccine is over 90% effective after just one dose. That would double availability if protocol was changed to get everyone (or at least those who want it) at least one dose first.
No, that's unfortunately not a viable option, unless I'm misunderstanding things. The first dose of the vaccine is highly effective over the short term with just one dose, because your body produces neutralizing antibodies as a result of exposure. That does not mean that you have long-term immunity, though. The second dose (or exposure to the actual virus) is required to produce lasting immunity beyond single-digit months, because it triggers a reaction from the neutralizing antibodies that you've alread
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The purpose of a booster shot is to activate memory cells, not to promote their creation. It's very important that a booster shot be given after the initial immune response has died down and the memory cells have proliferated. IIRC the canonical minimum interval is about two weeks, but many boosters work better if there's a longer interval (as we're starting to see with the COVID vaccines).
Pfizer chose a three week interval so that the second shot would be an effective booster but also administered as quick
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"Long Term Immunity" is based on facts not in evidence and magical thinking, unless you believe that "long term" means less than six months.
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There are all those reports of vaccines getting shipped but not injected.
Once we get production up to the rates we want, we're going to be putting a major strain on logistics shipping all that output.
Pfizer is working on a freeze-dried formulation but that's far down the road, maybe next year.
It's both, more dist and production is ramping up (Score:2)
About 41 million doses have been put into arms.
That's somewhere in the neighborhood of half the number that have been produced. 75 million have been delivered to states and other agencies.
So there is a distribution bottleneck.
Currently we're getting about a 7-10 million doses/week to patients. Pfizer is saying they are going be producing 10 million a week through March. Moderna 7 million, and Johnson & Johnson is coming up.
So distribution is going to need to double in order to keep up with production.
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So distribution is going to need to double in order to keep up with production. It hasn't kept up with production so far.
Our medical establishment is twisted into knots because our political establishment is scrutinizing the precise demographic strata of vaccine recipients. This has created the bottleneck you observe. It isn't going to end until production creates a glut of vaccine and it becomes impossible to justify allowing bureaucrats to continue to playing their 'equity' games.
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In California, people pretended to be old to get the vaccine. https://www.baynews9.com/fl/ta... [baynews9.com]
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Cool story, but what do you mean? At least in Georgia, the vaccine is currently available to over 65, healthcare workers, and first responders (personally I think if they are insisting on opening schools they should add teachers to that group). They are not tracking race, ethnicity, gender, or economic status.
Re:It's both, more dist and production is ramping (Score:4, Informative)
In your fevered rush to find yet another thing SJWs are doing to ruin the world you neglected to check what these people are actually doing and recommending.
It tends to be stuff like tailoring messaging to make sure no group is left out, e.g. making it available in Spanish or addressing concerns that some specific groups have. In the UK there is low confidence in the vaccine among Asians, so this advert was produced: https://youtu.be/jVlIEPwJb0Q [youtu.be]
As you can see it speaks to their concerns. The vaccines were worked on by Muslims, do not contain anything derived from pork or pigs etc. The people you describe as SJWs had to organize, write and produce that video.
In the US I hear that there are concerns among some communities that people will be arrested and deported if they go to get the vaccine. I hear you have similar problems getting them to fill out census forms.
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Distribution. Not advertising. Not messaging. The term is distribution, as in "distribution plans."
In the US I hear
Yes, yes. Soon you'll be whining about small pox blankets. Anything but the topic at hand; the failure of vaccine distribution. This century.
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Given that minorities have gotten much less than their share of vaccinations so far [kff.org], I think it is fair to investigate why this is the case and whether some factor is currently preventing minorities from having equal access.
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>"Given that minorities have gotten much less than their share of vaccinations so far [kff.org], I think it is fair to investigate why this is the case and whether some factor is currently preventing minorities from having equal access."
It is certainly fair to investigate why. It is not to fair to give preferential access, which is what is often proposed and sometimes implemented. That doesn't represent equal access.
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The price of your fairness is contributing to distribution bottlenecks. It's not an "investigation;" it's withholding vaccine while bureaucrats play racial politics with supply. Your attempt to downplay these policies as mere an "investigation" belies your intellectual dishonestly. Typical.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/grap... [bloomberg.com]
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>"It's about to get more interesting because the politicos just called on the governor to start setting aside 20% of the vaccine for minorities. I'm all about making sure it's equally available but at the end of the day, the uptake rate is what it is."
I, too, am all about making sure it is available to everyone who needs it, with the only prioritization based on medical risk (meaning individual risk- age, medical condition, not group identity).
Unlike equality of opportunity, equality of outcome (what som
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>"He refuses to buy into the systemic racism concept for a variety of reasons but remarked that it was delightful to watch a bunch of woke, anti-racists at his job try to tell him that they understand his reluctance to get vaccinated because of systemic racism (e.g. the Tuskegee experiments), but they know better now and to make up for it have set aside doses just for him, and he really, really, really should take it and they want to keep educating him so he'll make the right decision."
Yep. We need a L
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The Tuskegee Experiments were about WITHHOLDING treatment and have nothing whatsoever to do with not withholding treatment.
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If its a politician counting doses you can be sure that they are counting them in the way that makes them look best.
Aaron Z
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>"So there is a distribution bottleneck."
Yep. I know lots of people who want to be vaccinated, including those over 65, and are still waiting to be contacted. Meanwhile, governments continue to play with "equity" crap.
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Distribution is a very serious bottleneck for developing countries, and with a highly contagious disease, that's our problem too. A large infected population is an opportunity for variants to arise that could evade the current round of vaccines. So really, we're not out of the woods on this until all of us are.
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For much of the western world, that is correct. however, there are plenty of areas where storage and shipment at -70C is not as practical - more rural areas of Canada just don't have the necessary infrastructure. They're being given Moderna because at -20C, that's a temperature at which existing infrastructure works just fine.
Now, that's where the usefulness of Pfizer-Biontech would go - to those countries where there's sufficient inf
Question here (Score:2)
How did they achieve this change in the storage requirements? Did they alter the formula of the vaccine or the manufacturing process or something else?
Please don't tell me to read the article, because I've had a few cocktails and it's Saturday night and I wouldn't understand it anyway. Can someone just give me an answer as if I were eight years old? Thank you in advance.
Re:Question here (Score:5, Insightful)
When they specified the protocol they went with what they were sure of. Now with more research they are sure the higher temperature is OK. Also, with more volume and experience the production is more consistent so they can be sure there aren't less stable outlier batches.
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C'mon. They just changed the stated requirement, kind of like how the Kindle battery life doubled without anything at all changing except some documentation/marketing material:
https://www.cnet.com/news/kind... [cnet.com]
Re:Question here (Score:4, Funny)
How did they achieve this change in the storage requirements? Did they alter the formula of the vaccine or the manufacturing process or something else?
The main stabilizing ingredient in the vaccine is witches' blood, and initially they were unsure of their supply chain - so to be safe they went with the requirements of a vaccine lacking that ingredient. But now, happily, the STN-J has rounded up enough witches that they're comfortable easing the vaccine's storage and transportation protocols.
Re:Question here (Score:4, Funny)
Please don't tell me to read the article, because I've had a few cocktails and it's Saturday night and I wouldn't understand it anyway.
They thought it was egg salad. Turns out it's more like pizza.
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Someone left the fridge unplugged and after several days and testing of the product which ought to have spoiled it was discovered that the vaccine was akin to McDonalds French Fries and was not subject to "rot" when left in the open air, or McDonalds "high temperature" ice cream milkshakes that contain no ice cream nor milk and do not require "cold temperatures" in order to remain "thick".
How ? (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Gee, I wonder why they were in a hurry to release it?
Perhaps they should have spent a few more years on testing. Several million more people dead, but at least Pfizer would have kept Slashdot poster AlexHilbertRyan happy ...
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Is that impossible ?
Science! (Score:2)
By the time they are done "relaxing" requirements, the vaccine will only be 30% effective. "You only need one dose. " "You don't have to store it that cold." "You can squeeze more doses out of a vial."
Expect to see more of these, as politics figures out what the new Science! is.
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Politicians do not want an effective vaccine. If the vaccine is effective then they will lose their claim to justified exercize of unlimited communist authoritarian power, and the primary goal of all politicians and bureaucrats is raw power for raw powers sake -- it is 100% contrary to their own ends for there to exist an effective solution that does not entail the exercize of raw unadulterated communist authoritarian power.
Here's an idea... (Score:1)