According to US officials, several thousand doses of the Pfizer vaccine have been “quarantined” in the states of California and Alabama after an “abnormality” in the transportation process that caused the temperature to drop further than originally planned.

The Pfizer vaccine, developed with the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech, requires a storage temperature of about minus 70 degrees Celsius.

Vaccine vials are stored in discs containing at least 975 doses each.

General Gustav Perna, who oversees the logistics process for Operation Warp Speed, told reporters that two discs of the vaccine that arrived at two separate locations in California had to be returned to Pfizer after temperatures dropped slightly to minus 92 degrees Celsius.

The authorities rushed to clarify that the vaccines “never left the truck” during the post-incident briefing and that “they returned them immediately to Pfizer to replace these two batches”.

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