Vaccine storage issues could leave 3 bil people without access

Vaccination has always been a terribly difficult thing to do in many developing countries, and a lot of the money that is spent in support programs is used in the distribution and maintenance of the vaccines so they can be used safely and efficiently. Unfortunately this is still insufficient.

The pandemic is not the one that is originating these problems, it only helped put them in the spotlight. People working on vaccination programs at all levels have always been aware how difficult it is to even maintain current efforts, adding a new vaccine is only going to make things impossible to do unless Covax is much more successful than now.

New technologies like mRNA vaccines help a lot to make them safer and more efficient (so less doses are necessary) but also make them more fragile and difficult to distribute. This is not too difficult to deal with in developed countries, but at this point nobody is seriously considering these new vaccines to be useful in places where even a normal refrigerator is difficult to get.

Who will get vaccines first?..is the real question here. It’s tough to say exactly who will be first in line for the vaccines. The National Institutes of Health has convened an expert group to help determine vaccination priorities. At the moment, it looks like health care and essential workers as well as high-risk populations including older adults, residents of long-term-care facilities, and people with underlying medical conditions will be first up.