“Inside Look: Touring the Pfizer Laboratory Plant Where the COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Was Produced”

RPP News traveled to the Pfizer laboratory plant, in the United States, to learn about the place where the first messenger RNA vaccine authorized for emergency use in people was produced and which went on the market in December 2020.

It was on March 11, 2020 when the World Health Organization (OMS), declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The world came to a standstill and had to confine themselves at home to protect themselves from a virus that to date leaves more than 7 million deaths in the world, according to official figures from the international organization.

SARS-CoV2, the cause of the COVID-19 and that appeared as an outbreak in the city of Wuhan, in China, in December 2019, it spread rapidly, taking the world by surprise, claiming victims of all races and social status, collapsing health systems and separating many families.

How to stop the cause of so many deaths in the world?

Given the force of the virus, a group of scientists, concerned about the advance of the pandemic of the COVID-19came together to analyze and prepare studies to find a drug that stops the new coronavirus.

Thus, after a process and compliance with each stage of the clinical trials, after 280 days from the start of the investigation, and in record time, the results were known, the vaccine It yielded an efficiency of more than 95%, giving rise to hope for humanity. It is so Pfizer-BioNTech they began the elaboration of the first doses for their inoculation.

RPP visited a plant where vaccines against COVID-19 were made

The facilities are in the city of Kalamazoo, state of Michigan, USA; It has an extension similar to that of Central Park in New York and has approximately three thousand workers.

RPP Newsalong with other media outlets in the region, was the only one from Peru, invited by Pfizerto know in situ the place where the first vaccine Messenger RNA (mRNA), cleared for emergency use in people and left the plant in December 2020.

The elaboration of the vaccines it is all a perfectly synchronized process and with extreme care in safety and protection against contaminants. So much so that, to enter the facilities, all journalists had to comply with some essential measures to gain access to the plant.

It was not allowed to go with jewelry, including piercing, makeup, false nails and eyelashes, sandals, high heels, skirt or dress. Our clothing became a cap or cap and disposable shoe covers, a beard cover for men, a blue apron over our clothes and protective glasses, prior to all of which we must wash our hands.

in the plant of Pfizer, each team is organized and fulfills a specific function, always helped by technology such as the review of each vial, discarding those that are damaged or have some foreign particle. 600 vials are filled and then packed per minute, producing 1,300,000 doses every 75 hours.

the freezer farm

To enter there, we left the blue aprons and put on some yellow vests, another overshoes and a red cap over the one we already had on. It is an area that had to be enabled when they began to prepare the doses of the vaccines. They call it “the freezer farm or farm”, there are 600 freezers that have a storage capacity for 42,000 vials at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius in order to preserve the doses for up to 18 months.

The process to store the boxes with the vials inside the freezers should only last 5 minutes. For this, a team of four people, duly trained, is in charge of carrying out this step, which should only last 300 seconds because otherwise the batch must be discarded.

In this plant, from 2020 to date, about one billion doses against the COVID-19.

For now, Pfizer is not elaborating more vaccines to face the COVID-19 because there are enough The resumption of its production will depend on genomic surveillance that allows us to know which variants are circulating in the countries and thus have a vaccine updated with the messenger RNA (mRNA) platform, as explained by Dr. Alejandro Cané, a pediatric infectologist and one of the experts who participated in the clinical trial process and preparation of the vaccine.

While Pfizer is awaiting approval from the vaccine respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to be applied to pregnant women in order to protect the baby through the placenta and other vaccine against RSV too, but aimed at people over 60 years of age

Although a few days ago the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the end of the international emergency due to the pandemic of COVID-19Given the experience we have lived for almost three years around the world, where we have lost family and friends, taking care of ourselves and protecting ourselves must be part of our daily lives because the virus is here to stay and vaccination is and will be the one that saves lives.