The current vaccination campaign against SARS-CoV-2 has many challenging aspects, one of which is maintaining the cold chain for the distribution, delivery, and storage of available vaccines and guaranteeing that their full titre is retained for administration. Although outstanding technology for vaccine development has enabled products to be put on the market in 1 year, it is difficult to understand why approximately the same length of time is taken to roll out their administration, thus jeopardising the effect of the campaign. Additionally, if a substantial proportion of vaccines lose their potency or safety, or both, because of problems during transportation and storage, they will be less efficacious, and an increase in the overall costs of deploying the campaign will be inevitable. The reason for having to implement the cold chain is that thermostable vaccines do not exist (ie, heat-stable and freeze-stable, so as to be stored at a temperature of >8°C, which is a preferred vaccine characteristic recommended by WHO).1 No COVID-19 vaccine exists in a format that could be delivered to homes by mail and, ideally, self-administered.
Read the full publication from The Lancet here.