About 1,000 Swedes received Moderna Covid-19 shots that were kept too cold while being transported, the company responsible for deliveries, Apoteket AB, said on Friday.
A total of 2,100 doses of the vaccine manufactured in the US that were kept too cold for transport were delivered to the regions of Gävleborg, Halland, Värmland, Dalarna and Östergötland, a government spokesperson said.
The Swedish Public Health Agency said there was no risk to those receiving the Moderna vaccine, but it had halted the deployment and investigated whether keeping doses too cold could affect the vaccine’s effectiveness.
“We apologize for what happened and consider it an accident,” says the deputy head of health of the Gävleborg region, Tina Mansson Söderlund, who also undertook to investigate the incident.
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“The worst that can happen is that the vaccine is not effective, and then we will offer new vaccinations,” she added.
The government’s biggest epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter that an initial assessment of the situation was that those who received the doses were in no danger.
“Unfortunately, the supplier made a mistake and delivered the vaccine far too cold, that is, at the same level as it would have done with Pfizer’s vaccine,” he explains. “The modern vaccine has not been moved so cold.”
In some regions, all the remote doses of Moderna vaccine have been administered, while some regions have not yet used all of their doses, and are now saving their shots, pending the investigation.
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The Moderna vaccine can be stored for six months at a temperature of -20 ° C, but it is presumably stable for 30 days between 2 and 8 degrees, while the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine is stored at the colder temperature of -70 ° C. must be.
On January 17, about 146,000 people were vaccinated in Sweden, most of whom received the Pfizer vaccine.
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