5 Henry Ford Hospitals To Distribute Coronavirus Vaccines

DETROIT, MI — Two promising vaccines for the coronavirus will be distributed at five Henry Ford Health Systems hospitals, the health system announced Wednesday.

The two vaccines — mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna — are moving closer to approval, hospital officials said Wednesday, meaning healthcare providers around the country are now being challenged to prepare plans to receive, store and distribute the vaccines.

Henry Ford officials said both vaccines require unusually low temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius and minus 70 degrees Celsius during storage. To prepare for storing the vaccines, Henry Ford said it has acquired six special freezers to maintain the vaccines.

“We have been investigating these specialized refrigeration units needed to store these vaccines and preparing our facilities and operations since early summer,” Vice President of Pharmacy Operations at Henry Ford Health System Ed Szandzik said.

Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit will have two of each type of freezer, officials said. Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital, Henry Ford Macomb Hospital, Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital, and Henry Ford Allegiance Health in Jackson will each have one of each kind of freezer. All five hospitals have been approved as vaccine distribution sites by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

“Since we saw this potential need a few months back, we put in our order and made a concerted effort to be very proactive by securing these super freezers early on,” Szandzik said.

Installation of the freezers will be completed by Dec. 1, long before the arrival of the first doses of vaccine, officials said.

The Pfizer vaccine has been submitted for Emergency Use Authorization and is expected to be reviewed by an FDA Advisory Committee on Dec. 10. Shipments could be received by Henry Ford as early as Dec. 12, officials speculate. Moderna has said that it too will also soon apply for Emergency Use Authorization and, if approved, could be available in early January, officials said.

The state of Michigan is slated to receive several hundred thousand doses of the 6.4 million doses Pfizer says it will ship before the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 3.2 million people. The Pfizer vaccine requires 2 doses administered between 3 and 4 weeks apart. It has not been determined how many doses will be received by Henry Ford, officials said.