Japan will buy 10,500 deep freezers to store novel coronavirus vaccines and is considering purchasing dry ice in bulk as it prepares to protect its population from the virus.
The country has agreements to buy a total of 290 million doses of the vaccines from Pfizer Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Moderna Inc, or enough for 145 million people if everyone gets two shots as required.
Pfizer's vaccines need to be kept at around minus 75 Celsius (and Moderna's at about minus 20C), posing logistics problems.
Pfizer, as well as Moderna and its domestic partner Takeda Pharmaceutical, plan to build networks to keep vaccines at the appropriate temperature as they are distributed to where they will be deployed, the ministry said in a statement.
Japan has had more than 165,000 cases of novel coronavirus infections and 2,417 fatalities, with the capital, Tokyo, particularly hard hit. Tokyo reported 352 new cases on Tuesday.
At least 28 people, including three children, were injured when a Russian guided bomb hit on Sunday a high-rise building in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, local officials said.
At least three people were killed and 49 others wounded in a collision between two passenger trains in Zagazig city northeast of Cairo, Egypt's health ministry said on Saturday.
At least four people died and thousands of homes were damaged by flooding in eastern Romania on Saturday, officials said, as surging river levels put authorities on alert in much of central and eastern Europe following days of torrential rain.
A surface-to-surface missile was fired at central Israel from Yemen on Sunday, hitting an unpopulated area and causing no injuries, Israel's military said.