Ohio releases vaccine distribution plan once approved by FDA

As the state prepares for approval and distribution of the first coronavirus vaccine, the Ohio Department of Health has been using the flu vaccine to test distribution methods and has plans in place to make sure the coronavirus vaccines get out quickly.

“The Ohio Department of Health’s Vaccine Preparedness Office has been diligently preparing for the arrival of the vaccine for months, distributing adult influenza vaccine with the same process that will be used to distribute the COVID-19 as a test exercise,” ODH said in a statement.

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Those exercises have included running daily drills with prototype packaging to breakdown and repackage the vaccine in smaller units.

Ohio expects the Pfizer vaccine to be the first to be approved with emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration.

The vaccine, when approved, would be sent directly to the 10 prepositioned hospital sites, which includes Springfield Regional Medical Center in the Miami Valley. As supply increases, other healthcare providers will receive direct shipments from Pfizer if they are ordering 975 doses or more.

“Providers requiring fewer than 975 doses, such as smaller local health departments and physician’s offices, will not receive a direct shipment from Pfizer,” ODH said. “In these cases, Pfizer will ship the vaccine to the ODH RSS warehouse, where the vaccine will be redistributed in increments of 100.”

The Ohio Department of Health’s Receipt, Store and Stage warehouse is located in central Ohio.

ODH said the facility has the ultracold freezers needed to store the Pfizer vaccine. Each freezer can hold up to 720,000 doses of the vaccine to be stored at the warehouse.

When the vaccinations are ready to be shipped from the warehouse, they must be removed from the freezers and packed with dry ice in under two minutes.

Once packed, the vaccine doses will be delivered to healthcare providers within six hours and will remain stable for up to five days.

The state will be using GPS devices to track the vaccines on the delivery trucks.

The state also announced that if the FDA approves the Moderna vaccine that it will be shipped directly to all providers giving the vaccine. It will not be processed at the state facility.

Cox Media Group