Waterford Pharma CEO confident Ireland will have cold-storage capacity for Covid-19 vaccine

Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 must be stored and distributed at -70°C

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech recently announced that its vaccine is 95% effective, but concerns have been raised regarding large scale distribution of the vaccine due to its specific storage requirements.

The CEO of a Waterford pharmaceutical firm has said he is confident there will be no storage concerns in Ireland if the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is approved.

Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech recently announced that its vaccine is 95% effective, but concerns have been raised regarding large scale distribution of the vaccine due to its specific storage requirements which require it to be stored and distributed at -70°C.

However, Q1 Scientific CEO Stephen Delaney said that while cold chain distribution in pharma is complicated even “in normal times,” he is confident “there won’t be capacity storage issues within Ireland” provided the public and private sector work together.

Q1 Scientific, which is based in Waterford, already stores pharmaceutical samples at specific temperatures for 11 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world.

Mr Delaney said the group has “honed an expertise in the field of stability storage for pharmaceutical and life sciences companies over the last seven years,” adding that their track record gives him confidence in their ability to be part of the solution for Ireland in the fight against the coronavirus.

Stephen Delaney CEO at Q1 Scientific

“We have 50 stability chambers at our facility in Waterford all operating at different temperatures depending on the demand of our customers.” Mr Delaney said the core of their business is how “strictly controlled” and monitored their chambers are.

“We don't have a chamber that is roughly 25°C., they are precisely 25°C at every minute of every day for the specified timeframe.” “We operate storage from 25°C all the way down to -80°C."

"We have probes inside each room and they take a reading every minute, these readings are then sent back to a centralised system which is bespoke to Q1 Scientific; controls like this are the reason that pharmaceutical companies work with us.” 

The firm says it already stores and distributes medical drugs at the subzero temperatures that will be required for the prospective Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, and they are prepared to provide their services to store and distribute the anticipated vaccine.

The vaccine would need to be transported with dry-ice and continuous temperature monitoring, Mr Delaney explained, before being stored at -70°C on arrival at medical facilities in the dry-ice storage container for a specified timeframe.

Speaking on the amount of storage facilities that will be required for the Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland, Mr Delaney said he doesn’t foresee it being a problem.

“We have spoken with all of our suppliers discussing our options around scaling up our own facilities as the challenges around -70°C storage is mainly the capacity within the chamber."

"These chambers are quite small but there are a lot of companies supplying these chambers into Ireland within the last 40 years."

"I really don't think there is a big problem coming down the track in terms of capacity."

“In addition, these vaccines will be produced under ‘Just In Time’ manufacturing, therefore the stock that will come into Ireland from these companies will be on an ongoing basis."

Mr Delaney said is more likely that Ireland will get a percentage of the doses that are manufactured in January and the same in February and "it will grow from there.” 

Yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the UK is set to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, with the first injections taking place as early as December 7.

The companies expect to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and up to 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.