As we all know the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines have started. But it hasn’t been without struggles. The vaccines were produced in record time, a normal vaccine traditionally takes 10-15 years to develop and produce. The vaccines we are using for COVID-19 took about one year to develop and produce. The global effort in producing not one but numerous vaccines was amazing, but problem hasn’t stopped there. Cold Jet dry ice Sydney have advised that after the amazing efforts of scientists across the globe, dry ice is now the unsung hero of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
How has dry ice come into the picture? The 2 major vaccines, FDA, Pfizer and Modern all were produced in record time they had one catch that made the logistics on the rollout troubling on a global scale. They all needed to be stored at temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius. While we have modern technology that can store items at these temperatures, the transportation is the tricky part, and this is where dry ice is being used.
Dry ice is typically used in food production facilities because it helps keep food products at controlled temperatures to prevent bacteria growth and products from spoiling. So, the vaccines are using dry ice in a similar way. With speciality made dry ice boxes, the vaccines can be kept at temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius for 10 days at a time. This means we’ve created an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way to safely transport millions of doses of the vaccines all across the planet.
The main use of these dry ice boxes is in the flight freight of the vaccine. Each dry ice box can carry up to 5,000 doses of the vaccines. Cargo planes full of these boxes can be sent to the destination country. from there the country can choose to put the vaccines into deep freeze storage facilities or into fridges to be kept at temperature of 2-8 degrees Celsius. If the second option is chosen the vaccines need to be used with 5 days, after the 5 days the vaccine cannot be used and will be ineffective.
