Thousands of pounds of dry ice will be needed to ship and store the Pfizer COVID vaccine and a number of local dry ice companies are stepping up to make that happen.
One of those is Red Ball Oxygen of Shreveport. CEO Alex Kennedy said the product is one of the only ways that vaccine can make it from Pfizer into your arm.
“The Pfizer vaccine has to be maintained at negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit, and dry ice is at a temperature of 109 degrees below zero,” said Kennedy.
When dry ice also gets too warm it sublimates, transitioning straight from solid ice to gas, meaning there’s no cleanup to worry about or chance of water contaminating vaccines.
Kennedy said it doesn’t take a lot of dry ice to keep a package of vaccines cold enough to travel from the deep freezer to distribution sites.
“A lot of the cryopackers, the boxes that are going to be distributed can contain as many as 150 to 200 doses and you can keep them cold with just a few pounds of ice,” said Kennedy.
Red Ball is providing Shreveport pharmaceutical delivery company, Morris and Dickson, with dry ice for their deliveries to regional medical facilities. Major hospitals will be getting their vaccines delivered directly from Pfizer.
Kennedy said if the Pfizer vaccine becomes the go-to vaccine for the US the industry will experience a level of demand never before seen.
“We can produce about 12,000 or 13,000 pounds of ice a day, and we are anticipating that we may have to produce 24 hours a day seven days a week depending on demand,” said Kennedy.
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