An unexpected holiday gift was delivered by UPS Wednesday morning to Central Carolina Hospital â 500 doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
âWe didnât know it would be so quick,â said Spencer Thomas, the hospitalâs chief executive officer.
Both Modernaâs and Pfizer-BioNTechâs shots are so-called mRNA vaccines, made with a groundbreaking new technology. They donât contain any coronavirus â meaning they cannot cause infection. Instead, they use a piece of genetic code that trains the immune system to recognize the spike protein on the surface of the virus, ready to attack if the real thing comes along. While the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at minus-70 degrees Celsius, the Moderna vaccine can be kept at minus-20 degrees Celsius, making it more easily distributed.