120 doses of Moderna vaccine lost in Louisiana after power outage

WDSU Staff

4 years ago

FILE - In this Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020 file photo, blood samples from volunteers participating in the last-stage testing of the COVID-19 vaccine by Moderna and the National Institutes wait to be processed in a lab at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami. Creating vaccines and properly testing them less than a year after the world discovered a never-before-seen disease is incredible. But the two U.S. frontrunners are made in a way that promises speedier development may become the norm -- especially if they prove to work long-term as well as they have in early testing. (AP Photo/Taimy Alvarez, File)

BATON ROUGE, La. (WDSU) — Louisiana lost 120 doses of the Moderna vaccine after a power outage in Baton Rouge over the weekend, according to health department officials.

Dr. Joseph Kanter with the Louisiana Department of Health did not say where the doses were lost. However he said that the refrigerator the vaccines were in, lost the safe temperature after bad weather caused an outage.

Kanter said that officials did not find out about the power outage until returning following the weekend storms.

According to Kanter, the 120 doses were a majority of the state’s total loss of 146 vaccines. He did not say how the remaining 26 doses were lost.

The news comes as Kanter says demand for the COVID-19 vaccines far exceeds the supply given to the state.

Both Kanter and Gov. John Bel Edwards announced that more vaccines are on the way to sites starting next week.

Edwards has instructed that doses be made available for people 70 and older across all 64 parishes.