Pharmaceutical laboratories, manufacturing facilities and healthcare providers must establish standard operating procedures to assure safe vaccine storage. Because many vaccines must be kept frozen to maintain potency it is important to select the correct laboratory freezer and institute practices to be followed by laboratory or healthcare facility personnel responsible for vaccine storage.
Lab freezers as offered by Norlake and available from Tovatech come in several sizes. While size is important, the critical purchasing decision is deciding between a manual defrost laboratory freezer and an auto-defrost laboratory freezer.
The Immunization Action Coalition recommends that laboratory freezers used for vaccines be kept at 5˚F (-15˚C) or colder. Constant temperature control is critical to maintain this environment. Auto-defrost freezers use a heater to defrost the coils in the compressor. This causes an increase in temperature – a temperature spike – within the freezer cabinet that could cause an out-of-range condition. The spike can be more pronounced in under-the-counter units due to the small vaccine storage space. In contrast, manual defrost lab freezers do not experience temperature spikes that occur in an auto-defrost unit during the defrost cycle.
Because of this a manual defrost freezer is the best solution for vaccine storage, but there must be another freezer on site to store the vaccine during defrosting. Whatever your freezer size, try to minimize the number of times you have to access the contents during the day.
Suggested Operation Procedures for Vaccine Storage and Handling
The following suggestions are excerpted from the Immunization Action Coalition flyer “Don’t be guilty of these errors in vaccine storage and handling.*”
1. There should be a minimum of two personnel responsible for storage and handling.
2. Keep accurate and frequent temperature records – a minimum of two daily recordings but ideally a continuous record.
3. Take immediate action on out-of-range temperatures.
4. Maintain temperature logs for at least three years.
5. Have an emergency plan for a power outage or natural disaster.
6. Vaccine freezers are not food-storage freezers.
*www.immunize.org/catg.d/p3035.pdf
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Have you experienced incidents related to improper vaccine storage? What are your thoughts on manual vs. auto-defrost freezers? Please share them with us.
Tags: Lab Freezers, norlake
