A pharmacist at the Wisconsin hospital was fired for intentionally spoiling hundreds of doses of the coronavirus vaccine by removing it from the refrigerator overnight, he was arrested on Thursday.
Police in Grafton, Wisc. – about 40 kilometers north of Milwaukee – confirmed the arrest, but did not immediately reveal the suspect’s name, as he has not yet been formally charged.
The suspect was arrested on suspicion of reckless dangerousness, adulteration of prescribed medication and criminal damage to property.
Aurora Medical Center had already fired the pharmacist on Wednesday after he admitted to deliberately removing 57 vials of Modern vaccine from a hospital refrigerator last week.
Each vial contains about 10 doses of the vaccine.
It is not yet clear what motivated the man to ruin the long-awaited vaccine.
Lawyer Aurora Health Care, director of the Medical Group Jeff Bahr, said during a press conference on Thursday that the pharmacist removed the bottles from the cold storage overnight from December 24 to December 25, replaced them and again left out overnight from December 25th to December 25th 26.
When a colleague discovered the stopped bottles, the pharmacist initially interpreted this as an accident, saying that he took them out of the refrigerator to gain access to something else and then forgot to put them back.
After further questions, the pharmacist admitted that he withdrew the vaccines intentionally, hospital officials said.
Wired