A batch of 9,360 doses of Pfizer vaccine had to be evacuated to a special warehouse after a refrigeration failure during delivery to Kharkiv oblast at the beginning of the month.
The Kharkiv Regional Council reported the failure on July 15.
The Health Ministry said the doses will be examined.
Ukrainian media reported that the doses were ruined, citing a purportedly leaked video published on controversial news site Strana.ua. In the video, medical staff can be seen measuring the temperature of a shipment of vaccines to be 10-12 degrees Celsius.
According to Pfizer guidelines, the vaccine must be stored at -70 Celsius during transportation. After being taken out of cold storage, the vaccine can be used for up to a month if kept at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
On July 15, the Health Ministry extended the period during which the Pfizer vaccine can be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius from five days to 31, as did the European Medicines Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.K. Medicines Agency.
This decision was made after an official letter from Pfizer requested a review of the supply chain temperature regulations. The Ministry of Health says that after a series of studies, the vaccine manufacturer appealed to national and international regulators in May to relax the transportation requirements.
Kharkiv’s health department said that all deliveries are monitored and video recorded — any shipments that deviate from the standards are quarantined and tested.
“In no case will we allow the use of expired vaccines and vaccines with a violation of the deep-freeze delivery chain,” the regional health department stated.
Concerns about Ukraine’s lack of cold storage infrastructure for vaccines have floated around since last year. In December 2020, the Center for Public Health said that Ukraine has limited facilities that can safely store the Pfizer vaccine.
At the moment, the Pfizer vaccine is being supplied to Ukraine by international procurement agency Crown Agents in small batches. Its delivery is logistically difficult due to the extreme cold required to store it, Crown Agents regional representative Tetyana Korotchenko told Interfax Ukraine.
As of July 12, Ukraine has received over 5.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including 1 million doses produced by Pfizer.
