Some ineffective vaccines were administered on Feb. 15 at New York State’s vaccination site, Jones, the state health department announced Monday.
Spokeswoman Jill Montag said there was no health risk due to the ineffective shots, an extremely small number of individuals [were] affect, “and those appointments must be rescheduled.
“The health and safety of New Yorkers is our top priority, and due to the very specific temperature sensitivity of this vaccine, we have a process to determine if any temperature outages are taking place,” she wrote in an email. “This process worked, which enabled us to quickly identify this problem, identify the extremely small number of individuals affected, and start taking immediate action.”
She did not disclose or explain the number of people affected that caused the shots to be at the wrong temperature, or how the fault was discovered. The state also does not name the lot numbers of the vaccines involved.
The two vaccines approved in the United States – by pharmaceutical companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – require additional refrigeration. The state did not say which of these two was given on Feb. 15.
A worker who answered the phone’s vaccination line, 833-NYS-4-VAX, on Monday afternoon said she and her colleagues know what was reported in the press.
“The only thing we have now is what they say on the news,” she said, adding: “People called and then we pulled up the news, and then we know that was really what people said. . ‘
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