Adventist Hospital in California Scrambles to Deliver COVID Vaccine After Refrigerator Malfunction
Written by:
January 6, 2021
An Adventist hospital in Northern California was holding an entire county’s stock of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine when a refrigerator holding the vials malfunctioned on Monday, January 4, 2021. Suddenly, the race was on to use the 850 doses before they spoiled.
Adventist Health Ukiah Valley is a 78-bed hospital several hours north of San Francisco. On Monday, hospital staff noticed the refrigerator failure,
Both of the vaccines so far approved in the United States use cutting edge mRNA technology, which enabled a fast development but carries the downside of being quite fragile. The Moderna vaccine can survive up to a month in a refrigerator but only 12 hours at room temperature.
December 9, 2020 The Board of Supervisors spent the whole morning yesterday on the novel coronavirus update, with reports from Dr. Coren and Dr. Doohan, high-level hospital staff, and the CEO of Redwood Community Services, who reported on the outbreak at Building Bridges, the homeless shelter and day program in Ukiah. Yesterday, 37 new cases were reported countywide, and the day before, another covid patient died on the South Coast, bringing the death count up to 24.
Jason Wells, the president of Adventist Health in Mendocino County, assured the board that, with cross-trained staff and ventilators, the hospital could bring its current sixteen ICU beds up to 45. The state is only counting sixteen beds in its calculations of the county’s contribution to regional ICU capacity. Currently, 10% of the hospital’s workforce is out on medical leave, but Wells is confident that the 23-hospital system could rely on highly trained National Guard personnel if the surge demanded it. The bes