Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine image courtesy of Wikipedia
While vaccines remain the most powerful tool in achieving herd immunity for COVID-19, mass-vaccination has thus far proven more challenging than anticipated in many parts of the world. There are expected challenges, such as dealing with the subarctic storage requirements (–112º to –76º F) of the BNT162b2 vaccine from Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) and BioNTech (NSDQ:BNTX). But the vaccine rollout is posing a series of challenges, many of which have been hard to anticipate.
1. Lack of standardizationOne factor slowing COVID-19 vaccine distribution is confusion. “One of our biggest challenges right now is just lack of standardization across the U.S.,” said Marsha Flores Harris, product manager for FDB Prizm, a knowledge base platform from privately-held First Databank.
Not only is there variability in the storage requirements for the vaccines likely to be used in …