On the -1 floor of the hospital, where the serums are stored and distribution is prepared in over twenty ASL / To4 centers
IVREA
A superfridge at -79 degrees, other fridge-safes with built-in GPS and a tracked path so as not to lose sight of the load remotely, even for an instant. A retail planning that, however, is totally fluid and changes and changes from day to day to fit in with the arrivals of vaccine loads, computerized agendas, ASL / To4 centers open.
Welcome to floor minus one at the Ivrea hospital, where, in an anonymous corridor of the hospital pharmacy, the superfridge at -79 degrees holds Pfizer vaccines which, every week, the DHL couriers escorted by the carabinieri deliver to the hospital. A little further on, the other fridge at -20 to store Moderna vaccines and the normal one for AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
To deliver are the couriers SDA of Poste, also escorted by the police. Pfizero delivers every week, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson two or three times a month. Each pack is cold, wrapped in dry ice to keep the temperature unchanged. The route is traced by a GPS with a timer that records, instant by instant, the time elapsed by the load and the temperature. At the time of delivery (the hospital pharmacists take care of the content directly) the safety mechanism is unlocked and validated. The access doors are connected with an alarm. The electronic eyes of two video surveillance circuit cameras focus on the corridor and the refrigerators. Any anomaly should ever occur, the images recorded by the cameras can be acquired by the judicial authority.
Elena Zinetti, born in 1965, has been the director of the ASL / To4 hospital pharmacy complex since the beginning of February 2020. Less than a month and it was in full pandemic. On December 30th, Zinetti was in front of the hospital entrance, for the arrival of the first 1,170 doses of Pfizer. The next day, in Asl / To4, vaccinations had begun. A little less than five months have passed since that day and the number of vaccines has been on the rise. «The vaccine machine is now impressive – explains Zinetti – and we are a cog. In recent months a great harmony has been created in the group which, each for their own part, organizes the vaccination campaign. There is total integration and collaboration between all the services involved that continually share information so that programming for users can be as fluid as possible ». It goes without saying that the mechanism is complex and with many variables. The ASL / To4, at this moment, administers an average of over 3,500 vaccines per day in over twenty centers, with the possibility of exceeding 5 thousand doses.
The conservation and management of vaccines is extremely delicate. Pfizer’s bottles (each contains doses for 5 vaccines) can be taken out of the super refrigerator for handling, but not for more than three minutes. In a nutshell: the pharmacy has the availability of vaccines in real time which it communicates to the work group that schedules the vaccinations in the centers and, in turn, receives the weekly plan of how many administrations are scheduled and where. “Every day – explains Zinetti – we prepare the bottles needed for each center in boxes, we put them in the refrigerators for transport and our drivers deliver them”. At first glance, refrigerators look like picnic refrigerators, but in reality they are a sort of safe with a mechanism that records routes, travel times and temperature. If necessary, in vaccination centers that also administer in the afternoon, the vials are delivered twice. Frozen vaccines need to be taken out of the fridge to be prepared for dilution. “To the centers – adds Zinetti – we also supply all the kits with syringes for inoculation”. The dilution, with physiological solution, takes place directly in the centers and takes care of the nurses. Every morning everything is prepared and the warehouse workers help.
A curiosity: when the vial is empty it comes, as Zinetti explains eosinata. What does it mean? “Which is rendered unusable, stained witheosin, a contrast dye and canceled the label. In this way, it can no longer be used and thus possible fraud is avoided ». –