Injection of good news
IN A VAST Pfizer warehouse in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with hundreds of ultracold freezers standing sentry, the final leg of an unprecedented scientific, medical and industrial relay race is about to get under way.
Each day, the large freezers fill with stacks of white trays – “pizza boxes”, workers call them, because of their size – loaded with 195 identical glass vials. Each tube, about the size of a pinkie finger, contains a few precious droplets of frozen coronavirus vaccine, enough, when thawed and diluted, to give five people a first shot of protection against a pathogen that has killed more than 1.3 million people.
Two effective coronavirus vaccines are expected to be available before the end of the year – one from Kalamazoo, made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and another from biotech company Moderna. Both are proving to
