How will you safeguard vaccines in a power outage or when operations are disrupted? It’s a question you should be able to answer quickly.
When an emergency strikes, there’s no time to plan for protecting vaccines and other cold chain medical supplies. Everyone on your team must know how to respond to keep medicine in its safe temperature range.
That’s why medical facilities, blood banks, labs, and pharmacies need a vaccine emergency plan that covers storage, distribution, and administration. But having a plan isn’t enough – it has to be regularly updated and reviewed to align with evolving needs.
Protecting Against Cold-Chain Breaks During Emergencies
To keep vaccines from losing their potency, it’s crucial to keep the cold chain intact at all times, whether it’s business as usual or an emergency. Temperature excursions can reduce the effectiveness of or destroy valuable vaccines.
The recommended storage temperature is 2°C to 8°C (36°F to 46°F) for refrigerated vaccines
and -50°C to -15°C (-58°F to +5°F) for frozen vaccines. During emergencies, the likelihood of excursions due to power outages and other challenges increases.
A well-thought-out vaccine emergency plan will reduce the risk of that happening. These plans are often referred to by different names, including emergency vaccine response plans, contingency plans, and emergency vaccine management plans. But they all share the same goal – protecting refrigerated and frozen vaccines in an emergency.
Setting Up Your Vaccine Emergency Plan
Start by referring to your jurisdiction or vaccine program’s guidance on the elements of an emergency preparedness plan, if available. Another resource to reference is the Center for Disease Control’s Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit.
When you’re setting up a plan to keep the cold chain intact, the following components are generally included:
1. Designate key staff and responsibilities and outline training requirements.
Appoint a primary vaccine coordinator to oversee vaccine storage and handling. This person should be an expert in your facility’s emergency standard operating procedures (SOPs) and organize staff training. That training should happen:
- When new employees are hired
- As new vaccines get added to the inventory
- Whenever storage and handling recommendations are updated
- Annually for all staff as a refresher
2. Compose emergency contact and resource lists.
Include a comprehensive list of all the vital people you’ll need to contact in an emergency. This could include important facility staff, vaccine manufacturers, and equipment service providers. Regularly review this information to make sure that it’s up to date.
3. Identify emergency supplies to keep in stock.
Your emergency supplies will depend on your needs. Whether your plan is to move vaccines, store them in a secure phase-change material (PCM) refrigerator, or incorporate backup power, be sure to identify appropriate supplies before events occur.
4. Identify and set up an alternative vaccine storage facility.
To avoid threats to your physical location, you should have a backup vaccine storage facility identified in your plan, even if vaccine protection equipment is in place (e.g., a PCM
refrigerator and freezer that can weather power outages, backup power, and so on).
5. Regularly monitor and record vaccine temperatures.
The CDC recommends using a digital data logger (DDL) to keep track of vaccine temperatures. Rather than only measuring temperatures in your unit, data loggers also continuously record the temperature of the vaccines over time.
6. Include a protocol on what steps to take if vaccine temperatures go out of range.
Adhere to the manufacturer’s specific recommendations for handling out-of-range vaccines. In general, you’ll want to document the date, time, duration, and cause of the temperature excursion and notify your vaccine coordinator immediately.
7. Ensure that the vaccine emergency plan is prominently posted.
Keep copies of your plan posted near all vaccine storage units and remind employees to regularly review them. You should also have digital versions of all emergency plan printed materials.
8. Map out all the emergency equipment you have.
Document everything your facility has, including refrigerators, freezers, battery backup power, generators, and vaccine carriers. This is critical to ensuring your equipment is maintained properly and repaired if needed.
Better Emergency Preparedness Starts With a Strong Plan
Creating a vaccine emergency plan is one of the most important steps toward protecting your vaccines and other medical supplies. You can’t prevent all cold chain breaks, but you can be ready to keep vaccines safe from temperature excursions no matter the circumstances.
