Covid 19 coronavirus: hospital worker arrested for damaged vaccine doses

AU authorities arrested a suburban Milwaukee pharmacist on Thursday suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by taking them out of the refrigerator for two nights.

The arrest marks another setback in what has been a slower and messier start to vaccinating Americans than public health officials expected. Leaders in Wisconsin and other states have been asking the Trump administration for more doses as healthcare workers and seniors line up for the life-saving vaccine.

Police in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, said the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangering, tampering with a prescription drug and damaging property – all felonies. The pharmacist was fired and police said in a press release that he was in jail. Police did not identify the pharmacist and said he has not yet been formally charged.

His motive remains unclear. Police said detectives believe he knew the damaged doses would be useless and that the people who received them would mistakenly think they had been vaccinated when they had not.

Advocate Aurora Health Care Medical Group Chief Jeff Bahr told reporters during a teleconference Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials containing hundreds of doses of the Moderna vaccine from refrigeration at a medical center in Grafton during the night of December 24-25. He returned them, then left them outside again on the night of December 25 to Saturday. The vials contained enough doses to inoculate 570 people.

A pharmacy technician discovered the vials outside the refrigerator on Saturday morning. Bahr said the pharmacist initially said he had removed the vials to access other items in the refrigerator and did not inadvertently return them.

The Moderna vaccine is viable for 12 hours out of refrigeration, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before discarding the rest. Police said the discarded doses were worth between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.

Bahr said health system officials became more suspicious of the pharmacist as they reviewed the incident. After multiple interviews, the pharmacist acknowledged Wednesday that he intentionally removed the vaccine during the two nights, Bahr said.

That means the doses people received on Saturday are practically useless, he said. Moderna has told Aurora that there are no safety concerns, but that the hospital system is closely monitoring people who received the spoiled doses, she said.

Bahr declined to comment on the pharmacist’s motive. He said the hospital system’s security protocols are strong.

“This was a situation that involved a bad actor,” he said, “rather than a bad process.”

-AP