Coronavirus: scientists differ over causes and severity of BioNTech vaccine bottle defects as fears mount Hong Kong’s herd immunity will be tougher to achieve

‘Large defects might have an effect on the efficacy of the vaccines, but these would have been picked up much earlier,’ one expert in Hong Kong said

Another slammed the decision to suspend BioNTech vaccinations, saying ‘a very small number of doses had defects and they had already been trashed ... so it’s not a big deal’

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Issues with the packaging of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine prompted Hong Kong officials to suspend its use on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:04am, 25 Mar 2021Updated: 10:11am, 25 Mar 2021

The question of how exactly defective packaging could compromise vaccines became a talking point among the scientific community on Wednesday after the Hong Kong government suspended the use of BioNTech jabs because of faulty bottles, with at least one expert blasting authorities and suppliers for “overreacting”.

Faulty packaging in one batch was not a surprising find in injectable agents, the virologist said, while another pharmacist, however, described such defects as uncommon and suggested they were more likely to have occurred during the manufacturing rather than the transportation or storage processes.

BioNTech vaccines have special storage requirements. The shots must be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius and thawed and diluted before injection. Each inoculation centre is equipped with two pharmaceutical fridges to store the vials at temperatures of between 2 and 8 degrees for no more than five days. The prepared solutions must be used within six hours and cannot be stored at above 30 degrees.

But even as the suspension sparked theories on what could have caused the defects to the vials, other medical experts expressed concern that the abrupt halt to the BioNTech programme would hinder the city’s vaccine roll-out and set the target of achieving herd immunity back even further.

The first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines arrives at Hong Kong International Airport in February. Photo: Felix Wong

Officials said they were notified about the issue with seals of vials in the first batch, or “batch 210102”, by Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical, which has the rights to distribute the German-made vaccine across mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

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