Early Monday morning, over 30,000 doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine arrived in Oklahoma City.Getting it from there into the arms of front-line hospital workers in every corner of the state will be a massive undertaking, complicated by the Pfizer vaccine’s storage requirements.
It has to be kept at 95 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, either in ultra-cold freezers or in special, pizza-box-shaped containers full of dry ice.
Once that box is opened, all 975 doses inside have to be used within about six hours.
That isn’t a problem for large, urban medical facilities with hundreds of staff. But in rural areas, where hospitals often have a dozen staff or less, coordinating how to use up all that vaccine without any waste is more challenging.
As a result, the state will vaccinate people working in large medical centers first, with small rural hospitals at the back of the line within phase one.
Here’s the plan: From Oklahoma City, boxes of vaccine will be transported to 11 regional warehouses with ultra-cold freezers. Along the way, temperature sensors make sure vaccine doesn’t spoil in transit. Next, officials will take enough doses for a particular facility out of cold storage and transport them to local health departments and hospitals to be administered to front-line healthcare workers.
Anything left over, State Commissioner of Health Lance Fry said, will be given to whoever’s around:
“If we show up with a thousand doses of a Pfizer vaccine and we only have 800 healthcare workers there. Guess what, whoever's around is going to get that other 200 doses. You know, we're obviously trying to prioritize and make sure that we get the highest risk people first, but, you know, we're not going to waste any vaccine either,” Frye said.
Fortunately, a much easier-to-handle vaccine is right on the horizon. On Thursday, an FDA advisory committee granted Moderna’s vaccine candidate a recommendation for an emergency use authorization. That vaccine only requires normal freezer temperatures. Oklahoma is currently slated to receive a first shipment of 66,000 doses of that vaccine on December 23rd.
Once both vaccines are available, the Pfizer vaccine will be directed to more populous areas and larger facilities, and the Moderna vaccine will go to smaller facilities with fewer staff. Until then, staff at those smaller facilities will have to wait their turn for the Pfizer vaccine.
People living and working in long term care facilities will also have to wait a little longer. The state department of health won’t be handling their vaccinations. Instead, these groups will be vaccinated by national pharmacy chains working with Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s vaccine distribution program. Most of their vaccine supply will come from federal stock, with about 27,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine coming from Oklahoma’s allotment in December. Officials expect the first vaccinations in long term care facilities in a couple of weeks.
By the end of December, the Department of Health expects to receive over 165,000 total doses of coronavirus vaccine -- that’s enough for a first dose for everyone in phase one, assuming Operation Warp Speed has enough for long term care facilities, and only about 6% of phase two, according to the state’s estimates.
Stage four distribution -- that is, everyone else -- is expected sometime in late Winter or early Spring of next year. Of course, as officials are keen on reminding the public, everything is subject to change.
