MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pfizer delay in shipments affects eight European countries

Spain's branch of Pfizer informed of the delay in shipments to the eight nations due to a “problem in the loading and shipment process” at its plant in Belgium

Pfizer has postponed the delivery of new batches of its coronavirus vaccine to eight European nations including Spain, the Spanish health ministry said on Monday, a day after the European Union began its immunization campaign.

The Spanish branch of Pfizer informed Madrid on Sunday night of the delay in shipments to the eight nations due to a “problem in the loading and shipment process” at its plant in Belgium, the health ministry said in a statement.

It did not specify which European nations aside from Spain were affected.

Pfizer has informed the ministry that the problem “was already resolved” but the next delivery of vaccines “will be a few hours late” and arrive in Spain on Tuesday, a day later than expected, the statement said.

Asked about the delay during an interview with radio Ser, Health Minister Salvador Illa said it was due to a problem “linked to the control of the temperature” of the shipments which was “apparently fixed”.

The vaccine must be stored at ultra-low temperatures of about minus 70 deg C before being shipped to distribution centres in specially designed cool boxes filled with dry ice. Once out of ultra-low temperature storage, the vaccine must be kept at 2 deg C to 8 deg C to remain effective for up to five days.

Spain is scheduled to receive 350,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine per week over the next three months.