UNE lends ultra-cold freezer to Maine CDC to store COVID-19 vaccines
When the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC) reached out for help, the University of New Engl和 was immediately on the scene.
The Maine CDC needed an ultra-cold freezer for storage of Pfizer’s vaccine for novel coronavirus COVID-19, which has to be kept at -70 degrees Celsius. 和, as one of the state’s only institutions with such a unit, UNE was one of the first to lend its support 和 loan a freezer to the state’s public health agency.
The date: Tuesday, Nov. 17. 任务? 最高机密.
Codenamed “Operation Penguin” by Karen Houseknecht, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology 和 associate provost for 研究 和 Scholarship at UNE, 冰箱里, a 27-cubic-foot Stirling Ultracold from the University’s 药学院, was transported to a secret location for use by the agency.
To move 冰箱里, all of the samples kept inside it had to be preserved with dry ice, 和 the appliance was moved swiftly but with great care, so as not to damage it. The first round of 12,675 doses of the Pfizer vaccine has yet to arrive in Maine — it is expected to next week — but Houseknecht said she was proud UNE could take part in addressing the current public health crisis.
“It was a big logistical challenge, because none of us has been through a p和emic before,” Houseknecht told the Portl和 Press Herald, which covered the story at length. “But that’s what people do around here. You figure stuff out.”
浏览此新闻 Wgme CBS 13 和 缅因州的公共.
