THOUSANDS OF DELICATE VIALS OF FREEDOM AND HOPE, AT -70C
SPECIAL ultra low temperature freezers like these will store Scotland’s stock of the long-awaited Covid vaccine.
The jab contains a delicate strand of synthetic RNA, the genetic material that carries messages between cells, which is sheathed in a droplet of fat, and this means it must be kept at -70C.
Orders for 23 super-freezers were made by the Scottish Government before regulators approved the vaccine last week.
More are on the way and will be shared out across Scotland’s 14 health board areas. Ayrshire and Arran will have two freezers; the Borders, one; Dumfries and Galloway, one; Fife, two; Forth Valley, one; Grampian, two; Greater Glasgow and Clyde, two; Highland, three; Lanarkshire, one; Lothian, three; Orkney, one; Shetland, one; Tayside, one and Western Isles, one.
An additional freezer will be kept in a secret location somewhere in the Central Belt.
The freezers will be situated close to vaccine deployment centres, which will be opened across the country in the coming weeks.
One freezer is already at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife.
Claire Steele, pharmacy operations manager at NHS Fife, said: ‘The temperature range for the vaccine is -60 to -80, so we would be keeping it around the -70, -75 mark.’ An alarm notifies staff if it drops or increases temperature, to avoid any wastage.
Each compartment of the freezer in Kirkcaldy can hold ten trays of vaccine and each tray contains 195 vials. Within each vial is five doses.