Earlier this year, ISBER released a best practices guide for the management and use of ULT freezers, with the intent to educate new users of the systems in COVID-19 vaccine distribution. Building upon these efforts, ISBER has combined shared expertise once again in a new guide that covers the key considerations of managing the deployment of frozen COVID-19 vaccines.
While the mismanagement of ULT freezers causes vaccine losses every year, distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines raises unique concerns, from the global scale of current deployment efforts to the extreme storage requirements of the vaccines themselves. (The two leading COVID-19 vaccines must be stored at temperatures of -80℃ and -20℃.) For third-party logistics providers and healthcare systems, these logistical challenges create a complex distribution infrastructure where rapid deployment remains the end goal, but consistency is more difficult to achieve.
From ULT freezer selection and installation to maintenance and emergency preparedness, the latest ISBER resource supplements guidance from national and local health agencies on how to manage the cold chain distribution of frozen COVID-19 vaccines. Rather than a series of instructions, the goal of this guide is to highlight what considerations managers should address to develop a robust system for COVID-19 vaccine deployment.
You can find the ISBER key considerations supplement here.
As the provider of 24/7 remote temperature monitoring systems, CORIS can help you integrate best practices into your COVID-19 vaccine distribution program. Learn more about our system — and if it seems like a good fit for your needs, connect with us.
