Pfizer’s Corona Vaccine storage huge challenge for countries like India, Needs temperatures below -70 ° C

New Delhi : AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria said on Wednesday that the potential Covid-19 vaccine developed by pharmaceutical company Pfizer requires a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius and that is in developing countries like India, especially in towns. And there is a big challenge to supply vaccines in rural areas.

Guleria says that most vaccines in India are kept at a temperature of two to eight degrees Celsius. In most parts of the country, vaccines can be kept in cold chains at temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees Celsius. He said that there are no cold storage chains with such low temperatures in the towns, villages and remote areas of the country, in such a situation, it will be a big challenge to get the vaccine there.

Guleria, however, stated that the vaccine is capable of protecting up to 90 percent of coronavirus infections in the first-stage results announced by Pfizer Inc. and BioNotech SE after Phase III trials of the vaccine and is encouraging information.

“The storage of anti-Coronavirus vaccines developed by Pfizer requires extremely low temperatures, minus 70 degrees Celsius and is a major challenge for vaccine supply in developing countries like India,” said Guleria. “Storing the vaccine at such a low temperature and maintaining this cold chain in small cities and towns is going to be a very difficult task.”

Guleria emphasized that the data released by the companies developing the vaccine needed to be studied and to see how long the immunity developed from it would remain effective.