Vietnam has first super-cold freezer for Covid-19 vaccines

Vietnam’s Ministry of Heath has licensed three freezers in Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City to simultaneously store three million doses of Covid-19 vaccines.

A representative of Vietnam Vaccine Joint Stock Company (VNVC), an importer of Covid-19 vaccines to Vietnam, said that VNVC was licensed in January to operate the three super cold facilities to store Covid-19 vaccines at temperatures from minus 86 to minus 46 degrees Celcius.

Ultra-cold storage units operated by Vietnam Vaccine JSC. Photo: VNVC

Each freezer has a defrosting room with temperatures kept at minus 8 degrees Celsius to ensure vaccines are safely thawed prior to usage, the representative added.

VNVC was also licensed by the Ministry of Health to operate 49 warehouses and two central repositories for keeping vaccines at temperatures ranging from 2 to 8 degrees Celcius.

All cold and ultra-cold storage facilities are equipped with high-tech on-site and remote temperature monitoring systems.

The health ministry last week approved the import of 204,000 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine this month to stem the spread of the coronavirus in Vietnam. It would mark the first batch of 30 million vaccine doses Vietnam had previously ordered from Swedish-British developers AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

Vietnam has four domestic Covid-19 vaccines developed by Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Joint Stock Company, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, Vaccine and Biological Production Company No. 1 and the Center for Research and Production of Vaccines and Biologicals.

Vietnam has been making effort to handle the ongoing community Covid-19 infection that broke out in late January and since then has transmitted to 791 people in 13 cities and provinces. The country has so far had 2,383 cases, 627 of them active.