ROME -- With the first doses of coronavirus vaccines expected to become available in the United States and globally within weeks, keeping things extremely cold has assumed a compelling urgency.
One of the vaccines on the horizon, made by Pfizer and German company BioNTech, must be transported and stored at extremely low temperatures -- minus-94 degrees -- much colder than most medicines and vaccines. Hence the parameters of the tests conducted by the engineers at Desmon, an Italian producer of commercial refrigeration equipment, late last month.
"For instance, what you need to find out is how the device responds, how long the compressor has to work to keep the temperature," said Corrado De Santis, Desmon's chief executive and founder. "The more the compressor works, the more there's power consumption. It's also aimed at checking if/and for how long the compressor can ensure those performances.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use by mid- to late December. Biotechnology company Moderna also announced last month that it was filing for regulatory clearance.
Before the pandemic, ultracold freezers were a relatively niche market, supplying pharmaceutical companies, hospital labs and universities with the specialized and prohibitively costly cooling units.
Now, with the challenge of international vaccine distribution looming, the super-freezers are becoming much sought after, much like personal protective equipment and ventilators in the early months of the pandemic.
Desmon's sister company in the United States, K2 Scientific, said it has received preorders from major health care systems and retail pharmacy chains including CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid.
Production is scheduled to start early in 2021, with the manufacturer producing 50 to 100 units per day. The freezers will use GPS-tracking and send alerts should temperatures stray outside the necessary range, the company said.
Desmon is hoping it can meet some of the surge in demand.
The family-run company, established in 1994, specializes in making industrial-scale freezer and refrigeration equipment, although not, until now, ultracold freezers. It was acquired by Illinois' Middleby Corp. six years ago,
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"My understanding is that the U.S. would need at least 50,000 of these deep freezers to distribute [the vaccine] on a vast scale," De Santis said.
Such units can sell for about $12,000 to $21,000. But Desmon is hoping to beat those prices, De Santis said.
Pfizer said it has created its own GPS-tracked coolers filled with dry ice to distribute the frozen vials of vaccine on a "just-in-time" basis. Packing shipments with dry ice can allow for 15 days of storage, Pfizer said.
Ultralow-temperature freezers can extend shelf life for up to six months, provided the units can withstand environmental conditions. But manufacturers may have to scramble to ramp up production in time for rapid distribution of the vaccine.
"Everybody wants the vaccine, but many companies will only ever roll out a few hundred units per year," De Santis said.
Paul Knight, a life sciences analyst and managing director at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said supply chain pressures would be limited to distribution of the vaccination, not its storage.
"The test will be the shipping and distribution for air and freight carriers. The second challenge will be point of vaccination with many doses administered by doctors and clinics," Knight said in an email.