By Rocky Swift, Sangmi Cha and Neil Jerome Morales
TOKYO/SEOUL/MANILA, Nov 10 (Reuters) - With tropical heat,
remote island communities and a dearth of ultra-cold freezers,
many Asian countries aren't betting on Pfizer's experimental
vaccine solving their COVID-19 crisis any time soon.
The world cheered on Monday when Pfizer Inc PFE.N
announced its shot, jointly developed with BioNTech SE BNTX.O ,
was more than 90% effective based on initial trial results.
Yet health experts cautioned that the vaccine, should it be
approved, was no silver bullet - not least because the genetic
material it's made from needs to be stored at temperatures of
minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below.
Such requirements pose a particularly daunting challenge for
countries in Asia, as well as in places like Africa and Latin
America, where intense heat is often compounded by poor
infrastructure that will make it difficult to keep the "cold
chain" intact during deliveries to rural areas and islands.
That is a problem for everyone in the world, given the World
Health Organization estimates about 70% of people must be
inoculated to end the pandemic, and Asia alone is home to more
than 4.6 billion - or three-fifths of the global population.
Some Asian countries are prioritising containing the novel
coronavirus rather than looking to stockpile vaccines, while
others are looking for alternatives to the messenger RNA
technology used by Pfizer that requires such ultra-cold storage.
"On the cold chain requirement of -70 degrees, that is a
hefty requirement. We do not have such facility," Philippines'
Health Secretary Francisco Duque told Reuters.
"We will have to wait and see for now," he added. "The
technology Pfizer is using is new technology. We don't have
experience with that, so risks can be high."
Pfizer told Reuters that it had developed detailed
logistical plans and tools to support vaccine transport, storage
and continuous temperature monitoring.
"We have also developed packaging and storage innovations to
be fit for purpose for the range of locations where we believe
vaccinations will take place," it said.
'VACCINE IS STORY FOR FUTURE'
Yet even wealthier nations like South Korea and Japan are
managing expectations.
"Storage is going to be a big challenge for us," said Fumie
Sakamoto, infection control manager at St. Luke's International
Hospital in Tokyo.
"I'm not sure how well prepared our government is with
regards to maintaining the cold chain. Hospitals in Japan
usually do not have ultra-cold freezers, but I think it's high
time we started thinking about the logistics for the vaccine."
Japan is among three countries in Asia Pacific that have
announced supply deals for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. It has
signed a deal for 120 million doses, while Australia has secured
10 million doses and China's Fosun 600196.SS has secured 10
million doses for Hong Kong and Macau. Japan's PHC Corp, which supplies medical freezers, told
Reuters that demand had shot up 150% this year and that they
were increasing production to meet demand.
Kwon Jun-wook, an official at South Korea's Disease Control
and Prevention Agency (KDCA), said it wanted to see how
vaccination progressed in other countries first and would
thoroughly review its supply chain.
The country had recently experienced the problems of cold
storage when it had to discard about 5 million doses of flu
vaccines because they were not stored at recommended
temperatures. A 2018 study commissioned by the agency found that only a
quarter of 2,200 private clinics it surveyed had medical
refrigerators, with 40% using household refrigerators.
For some countries, it's still very early days.
Indonesia, whose 273 million people are scattered over more
than 17,000 islands, is considering a variety of vaccines, but
the Pfizer one is not yet among them, said Airlangga Hartarto,
who heads the country's COVID-19 response team.
Vietnam, which successfully contained its outbreak through
aggressive mass testing and strict border controls, said it
would continue to focus on containment effort. "The vaccine is a story for the future," Deputy Prime
Minister Vu Duc Dam, told a government meeting on Friday.
"Demand is far higher than supply, and we have to pay large
deposits to secure our position, which I see as very high risk
and a waste of money and time."