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, Reuters reported, quoting the Ministry of Health.

Japan 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.