Cold Storage No Longer a Constraint

Yahoo: With little fanfare, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave Pfizer permission this week to store its COVID-19 vaccine in a typical refrigerator for one month — freeing the vaccine from the need to be shipped in cumbersome boxes stuffed with dry ice.

Among authorized COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer’s vaccine was notorious for its ultra-cold storage requirements. Now, as the only vaccine authorized for children ages 12 to 17, this new flexibility could dramatically accelerate the effort to vaccinate America’s teens and adolescents.

Pfizer spent millions on its cold storage technology and now discovers that it isn’t strictly necessary–that wasn’t a mistake, Pfizer did the right thing–but it’s a good reminder of how new this technology is and also how the clinical trial decisions are not written in stone.

Straussian take: Investigate fractional dosing.