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Maine colleges lend critical research freezers as state mobilizes for historic vaccine rollout UNE, SMCC, Bates and Colby lend ultra-cold freezers needed to store the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer. Karen Houseknecht opened the email and read what could have been a line from a spy novel. The state of Maine needed help from the University of New England and the matter had to be kept strictly confidential. It was Tuesday, Nov. 17, and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention needed an untold number of ultra-cold freezers by that Friday. An initial shipment of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer was expected to be delivered to Maine the following Monday and it had to be stored at minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit).
Andree Kehn/Sun Journal Published on December 17, 2020 On a Monday in early November, Associate Professor of Biology Brett Huggett was listening in on the state’s daily COVID-19 briefing, when a term used by Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, caught his attention: ultra-cold storage. That day, Nov. 9, Pfizer had just announced extremely positive findings from its early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine. And already, Shah was planning, in what Mainers had come to know as his cautiously optimistic way, to be ready if the vaccine was authorized for use. “As you note,” Shah said to one reporter during the briefing. “It does require ultra-cold storage.” Minus 80 degrees Celsius, to be precise, or minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit.