(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
By Hanna Park
(BOSTON) Nearly 2,000 doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine were spoiled at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Boston after a contractor accidentally unplugged a freezer, The Associated Press reported Friday.
Staff at the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center discovered Tuesday that a freezer had failed, compromising 1,900 doses.
“The plug was found loose after a contractor accidentally removed it while cleaning,” said Kyle Toto, a spokesman for the VA Boston Healthcare System, in a statement. He said the spoiled doses will most likely not delay the vaccine rollout and that replacement doses were already underway.
Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines must be stored at low temperatures, between negative 13 and negative 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Storage facilities at the hospital center were equipped with alarms intended to trigger if the doses get too warm or cold, though they did not sound when the freezer was unplugged.
“An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the incident and why the monitoring and alarm system did not work as expected,” he said.
Massachusetts reported a total of 462,910 coronavirus cases and 13,622 deaths as of Friday, according to the state Department of Public Health.