The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

-70C seems pretty extreme for most facilities. Would they just store it on dry ice or something?

That's basically what you need to do. This is fairly manageable for urban hospitals but becomes very challenging for smaller rural hospitals -- and especially so remote areas (such as our territories) or for developing countries.

One strategy we may end up with is the use of BioNTech/Pfizer at the big urban hospitals with Moderna used in most other locations. Lots of logistics work remains to be planned, regardless of which vaccine is used!

Urban hospitals (like ours) will generally have the refrigeration equipment to maintain -70C. This is not the first medication with this particular storage requirement. Pfizer has developed a dry ice based storage box for smaller facilites which lack a -70C capable refrigeration facility, but there are pretty substantial limitations as described here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW1GExQB84&t=4s&ab_channel=WendoverProductions