then they are generally trained on how to calibrate and maintain the ultra-low freezers.
However the mRNA vaccines are literally a "brand new" technology and have tighter specs than run-of-the-mill "viral-component" vaccines, and common sense things like highlighting/emphasizing special "training" would have been part of a "plan" upon a national rollout of these vaccines. And THAT is THE problem.
The previous administration really had "no plan".
They basically had the relevant agencies review the clinical trial data to assess safety and efficacy and then worked out contracts to purchase certain quantities of the product, where the manufacturers basically provided storage requirements that were to be disseminated. Then it was shoved out to the states based on who knows what criteria.
In these novel vaccines' case, it's not like sending out the seasonal flu shots, which many of the vaccine clinicians/techs would be aware of how to handle, so "paying attention" (or not) isn't necessarily the only problem if the desire was to get as many "shots in arms", as fast as possible. I.e., past practice with storage and operating procedures that might have been fine for the standard approved vaccines, is apparently not good enough for this.
And in a number of cases, there is "mass vaccination" going on at stadiums, convention centers (like here in Philly) and other large venues and obviously those locations don't have the best temp storage facilities, where by the time you reach the end of a vaccination day, even with attempting to maintain "portable" cold storage, your vaccine might be close to expiration being out of their long-term storage environment too long. Plus part of the vaccination protocol has been to hold a person newly vaccinated, for at least 15 minutes to watch for adverse reactions before allowing them to go home (or back to work). With the expansion of "1a" for the state (over 65 w/underlying conditions), that makes things worse because the hospitals cannot handle that.
What happens in small, low-population rural counties has little or no applicability in terms of numbers of vaccinations that are being performed as compared to what goes on in high-population areas doing mass vaccinations for extended periods of time.
Neither the Pfizer nor the Moderna vaccines are "fully approved". They are only being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization so there is still "real world" missing operating procedures that would need to be nailed down. Otherwise both would have had the type of standard instructions for vaccinations as developed for the "common" vaccines (developed by CDC) as seen here - https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/vaccines-diseases.html
(and as you'll note, neither of the COVID-19 vaccines are listed there)
An addendum was tacked onto the end of the existing "Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit" document that CDC has available here (PDF) starting on page 49. But when you have many of those doing the vaccinations also caring for patients, it gets difficult to jam training in there and understand the implications.
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