The Health Board's central warehouse still holds medicines and vaccines quarantined last week. A temperature surge at its storage facility saw the board decide to move medicinal products to the warehouse of a wholesale partner.

Quarantined medicines need to be stored should manufacturers find that the products are still viable despite the temperature change. A final decision has not been made for all products yet.

Director of the Health Board Üllar Lanno turned to the Rescue Board for help with the rapid logistics operation. The Tallinn Lilleküla Commando responded.

Next week will see deliveries of products that need to be stored at a temperature of 2-8 degrees and will be taken to the partner's warehouse.

The initial cold storage temperature change did not concern vaccine doses kept in autonomous ultra-low temperature freezers. Vaccines that require lower storage temperatures will still be taken to Health Board warehouses.

The incident does not affect the Estonian vaccination effort as all vaccine doses used are kept at the partner warehouse or with healthcare service providers.

A temperature surge at a Health Board cold storage unit ruined over 68,000 doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine during the Midsummer holiday that Estonia was set to donate to other countries. The same warehouse held standard vaccines for children and youths, immunoglobulins and flu vaccines. A total of 250,000 doses of vaccines and medicines will have to be written off.

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