Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine offers little hope to Indians without power and cold storage

The vaccine, with reported 90 per cent effectiveness, must be stored at temperatures matching an Antarctic winter – a logistical nightmare for India

India has been scrambling to secure 500 million doses of coronavirus vaccines by July from various manufacturers

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The World Health Organization estimates about 70 per cent of the global population must be inoculated to end the pandemic. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:30pm, 12 Nov 2020Updated: 1:04pm, 25 Nov 2020

Despite hopes raised by Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine, it will take huge efforts for India to defeat the coronavirus, with its 1.3 billion population and the world’s second-highest caseload.

Pfizer’s announcement that initial trials showed their experimental Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 per cent effective sparked cheer across the world, scarred by a pandemic has killed 1.2 million people and infected 50.7 million.

But the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at temperatures matching an Antarctic winter – a logistical nightmare for India with heatwaves exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, few ultra-cold freezers, patchy power and a largely rural population.

“The new two-shot vaccine from Pfizer has to be maintained at minus 80 degrees – nowhere on the planet does the logistical capacity exist to distribute vaccines at this temperature,” said Toby Peters, a professor at Britain’s University of Birmingham.

“This is a new challenge to be urgently managed,” said Peters, an expert in cooling technologies who is studying plans to roll out Covid-19 vaccines.

About 100 drug development teams worldwide are racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, with the hope of distributing them globally on a scale never before witnessed.