Today, the video and posting “Qingdao woman with baby vaccination, the vaccine freezer was opened by the staff with squash” were circulated on the internet.
In the afternoon, @QingdaoHealthHealth, the official microblog of Qingdao health and Wellness Commission, responded quickly to this incident, saying that the incident did not take place in Qingdao.
Photo
Source: Screenshot from the official website of Qingdao Health and Health Commission
Can the quality of a vaccine with the smell of squash be affected?
We all know that vaccines are biological products and have special needs for storage.
In this case, the open squash was placed in the refrigerator where the vaccine was stored with impunity, which makes people worry: will this affect the quality of the vaccine?
In response to this question, @UsedScientist, a well-known science blogger and PhD in microbiology from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Clove, “In fact, the effect is almost negligible if you carry the squash alone.
But it’s clearly not just the packet of squash that needs to be looked at in this case.
According to @SecondhandScientist, “If you can put squash, and still open squash, derived from it, it means that the temperature control of this refrigerator is likely to be not strict.
In other words, if the hospital refrigerator is used as a living, the frequency of use may be high, and the temperature monitoring may not be in place, thus indirectly causing the quality of the vaccine to be affected.
From the perspective of vaccine manufacturers, they will focus on the stability of the finished vaccine, and this stability data is all predicated on the storage and transportation temperature of the vaccine.
On the issue of temperature control, @SecondhandScientist explains, “Usually different vaccines have different temperatures, but roughly 2 to 8 degrees is common, which is why hospitals use refrigerators to store vaccines.
Usually, for these types of refrigerators, we need to monitor the temperature separately, and for the stricter ones, it may be a real-Time curve, and for the less strict ones, we also control the length of the switch and the switch interval of the refrigerator as part of the quality control, and only then can we ensure the stability of the product.
So, if you look at it from this perspective, even without looking at hospital management, the matter of putting Food and vaccines together is already not in line with the quality norms of the company or institution in the first place.
Ultimately, however, if we really want to determine whether the quality of the vaccine product was affected in this case, we can only know by further quality analysis of the vaccine.
Can vaccines be kept in hospital refrigerators?
After talking about the storage requirements of the vaccine itself and the quality norms of the company, let’s look at the hospital: what about the quality management of the hospital refrigerator? Does it meet hospital standards to put the squash in the refrigerator?
If we judge by common sense, this is obviously not in line with the hospital’s refrigerator management system.
Sun Yuanshui, a young member of the hospital infection control committee of the Fujian Preventive Medicine Association, told Clove, “In the clinical setting, we all strictly require operators to store food and medicine separately.
Essentially, the squash and vaccine were stored together, which is not a problem with the squash, this incident actually exposes the disregard for the principle of clinical asepsis.
Sun Yuanshu also added that the mixing of food and drugs can easily cause other hazards: “Food itself is a good medium for bacteria, and mixing it with drugs may lead to contamination. In turn, if there is leakage of drugs, it may also affect food safety.
Returning to the matter itself today, it is also worth drawing attention to more than just the squash and vaccines. Behind the incident are various long-standing hospital guidelines that need to be taken more seriously and followed more strictly.
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