Question reference: S5W-33321
- Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 17 November 2020
-
Current status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 10 December 2020
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to statement by the First Minister on 10 November 2020 (Official Report, c.25), whether it will confirm the (a) brand name, (b) type, (c) capacity and (d) cost of each fridge used to store Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine; where these will be located, and whether they will be portable.
Answer
Twenty three ultra-low temperature (ULT) freezers capable of the storage of medicines have been purchased, with at least one freezer in every territorial health board. Some boards will have more than one ULT freezer, for example three ULT freezers are being located in NHS Highland to account for the board’s geography and the current understood limitations on transporting the vaccine.
The total cost of the ULT freezers that have been purchased is £125,000. The freezers are not portable. The vaccines are packed in multi-dose vials which minimises the amount of storage space required. There is estimated to be sufficient capacity in the NHS Scotland estate to hold around 1 million doses of vaccine at any point in time. The capacity of the individual ULT freezers ranges from 101 litres to 729 litres. Due to their size and requirements these ULT freezers are not portable.
There is significant existing -8°C to +2°C refrigeration storage capacity within the NHS estate - both dedicated cold-stores in most hospital locations and stand-alone refrigeration in secondary and primary care locations. Fridges can be moved, for example to temporary walk-in and drive-through locations, as required. To support the seasonal flu programme and in preparation for the Covid-19 vaccine, 192 additional fridges, at a total cost of £210,000, have been sourced since August 2020.
If stability data supports the movement of the Pfizer vaccine to alternative locations at -8°C to +2°C, this will be managed using vaccine porters. These are specialist cool boxes that are validated to maintain temperature within a fixed range for a defined period of time. These are reusable and are used annually to support the seasonal flu campaign. Additional stock of vaccine porters and associated cool packs have been purchased to increase capacity to support the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine. The total cost of recent purchases of vaccine porters is approximately £186,000.