Pfizer Vaccine Expiration Date Extended

Belizeans are still being encouraged to get their jabs if they are not already fully vaccinated and boosted.  And now, you may have more time to do so. The Pfizer drug company has gotten approval to extend the deadline for its vaccine efficacy. In other words, if the original date for the shipment sent to Belize was the end of February, it is now the end of May.  However, local storage may have some influence on this use-by date.  This morning, the Central American Regional Director for the Center for Disease Control appeared on Open Your Eyes where she discussed the reason for the extension.  Doctor Emily Gutierrez was joined by Belize’s own technical advisor to the Ministry of Health, Doctor Natalia Largaespada Beer.

Emily Zeleinski Gutierrez

Dr. Emily Zeleinski Gutierrez, Center for Disease Control

“These vaccines, the Pfizer vaccines are produced under what we call “an emergency use authorization.” And that is given out by the US, FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, that is the regulatory body. So when a new vaccine comes out, they actually don’t give it a specify expiry date. They put a pretty short date on it, and as they accumulate more experience, and know we have had it for over a year. It is very shelf stable, and this gives us the data required, not just by the FDA, but also the European Union Medical Advisory Board, was able to give it over three months what is printed on the label. So this was for millions of vaccines, including the ones used in the United States.”

Natalia Largaespada Beer

Dr. Natalia Largaespada Beer, Technical Advisor, Ministry of Health

“The expiration date, the time that we can use the vaccines is dynamic also. Because when we receive our national supply, that goes into the low temperature freezers and they can be there up to six months. But once we start deploying the vaccines to the districts, that time for the use of the vaccine is short. Just one month. So we have to follow the manufacturing company’s guidelines to ensure the potency of the vaccines .And in this case, as Dr. Gutierrez was saying, the vaccines are relatively new. It is like how we were studying, and I mean the scientists were studying, the duration of the infection when one becomes infected with COVID-19, at the beginning it was three months, then they raise it up to six months based on evidence, and then up to eight months, the protection, no? But again, COVID-19 is not in a vacumm. The hosts, the conditions of the host, play a key role.”