COVID-19 Cold Chain Transport: How to Monitor Temperature?

The world health organization announced on December 18, has been with multiple vaccine development or production agency for vaccine procurement aspects to sign the agreement or statement, ensure new champions who dominate the COVAX global vaccine program will be able to get new nearly 2 billion doses of vaccine, the vaccine will fastest since the first quarter of next year for participating economies. China's first new crown mRNA vaccine was approved to start clinical trials on June 19. As of October 20, 2020, a total of about 60,000 subjects have been vaccinated in China, and no reports of serious adverse reactions have been received.

As we all know, vaccines, biological products, are very sensitive to temperature and usually need to be stored at low temperatures. Everything from making to shipping to saving to using is crucial. In particular, in the process of transportation, many times it has to be transported across borders. For such a long time, it is necessary to keep the vaccine at its suitable ultra-low temperature all the time. There is usually a dedicated cold chain transportation to maximize the protection of the activity and effectiveness of the vaccine.

We usually buy fresh food with cold chain transportation, but the cold chain transportation required by vaccines is completely different from the cold chain transportation of fresh food. A foreign study in 2019 found that 25% of vaccines would degrade at the destination after arriving. To ensure complete and safe transport of the Covid 19 vaccine, it is necessary to continuously monitor the ambient temperature and keep it as stable as possible.

Monitor the temperature in the cold chain

Monitoring the temperature means measuring the temperature at regular intervals. This keeps the temperature trend under constant control. Wireless temperature and humidity data logger is designed for this purpose, HK - J9A100 series of temperature and humidity data logger used the high-precision sensor, the temperature and humidity measurement, of time interval set by the user to store data automatically, and is equipped with intelligent data analysis and management software, to provide users with a long period of time, temperature and humidity measurement, record, alarm, analysis, and so on, satisfy the customer different application requirements in the temperature and humidity sensitive situations.

The monitoring cold chain sets four temperature indicators

As we said, one of the challenges in the logistics of transporting vaccines is to keep the temperature constant. However, in real life, temperature is not absolutely stable. It will fluctuate due to the impact of environmental changes during transportation.

So, what reference temperatures should we consider to verify that the vaccines being shipped are properly stored? In this case, we do not have a reference temperature, but instead consider four temperature indicators:

Absolute maximum temperature. The highest temperature the product can withstand.

Best maximum temperature. The upper limit of the optimal temperature range.

Optimal minimum temperature. Lower limit of optimal temperature range.

Absolute minimum temperature. The lowest temperature that the product can withstand.

According to these four indicators,whether the vaccines we transport have been properly transported without "deterioration". The parameters of HENGKO HK-J9A100 series temperature and humidity data logger are as follows, the temperature measurement range is -35℃-80℃, if you do not need such a high temperature measurement range, we also have HK-J9A200 series for choice, the temperature measurement range is -20~60℃, -30~70℃.

Data reading and analysis

In addition to recording the temperature fluctuation data, data reading and analysis is also very important. We need to read the data to generate a report to analyze whether the product is stored in the correct temperature range. The HENGKO wireless temperature and humidity data logger connects the product to your computer's USB port and waits for about 20 to 30 seconds. The PDF report will be generated automatically on your computer. The recorded data can also be read on the computer through the SmartLogger software, which provides professional analysis, export documents in CVS, XLS format function. This will greatly reduce your tedious work and improve your work efficiency.