MILWAUKEE – Lawyer Aurora Health says a now-dismissed employee intentionally removed 57 vials of the Modern coronavirus vaccine from a refrigerator last weekend, making them ineffective and discarded.
Each vial contains enough vaccine for 10 vaccinations.
Aurora was initially “led to believe” that the removal was a mistake. But on Wednesday, the official “acknowledged that he intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration,” according to a statement from the health provider.
The Grafton Police Department said in a statement on Wednesday that it was notified by Aurora shortly after 6 pm “about an employee tampering with vials of the COVID-19 vaccine” at his hospital.
The statement goes on to say that the incident is being investigated by the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as by the Grafton police.
Aurora said the employee’s action is “a violation of our fundamental values”.
The employee was fired, and Aurora said she had notified “competent authorities for further investigation”.
Aurora said that no other officials were involved and that she plans to release more information on Thursday.
His statement continues:
“We continue to believe that vaccination is our way out of the pandemic. We are more than disappointed that this individual’s action will result in the delay of more than 500 people in receiving the vaccine ”.
The bottles were removed on Friday and most discarded on Saturday, according to an earlier statement from Aurora.
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Doctors still managed to administer part of the vaccine from the vials within the allowed 12-hour post-refrigeration window, but had to discard most, according to a previous statement by Aurora.
The Modern vaccine can be stored in a freezer temperature for up to six months and is stable at normal refrigerator temperatures for 30 days – making transportation simpler than the Pfizer vaccine. But once thawed, the vaccine cannot be refrozen.
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At room temperature, the Moderna vaccine can last up to 12 hours.
When the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine – which must be kept in deep-frozen temperatures – arrived in Wisconsin in mid-December, state health officials did not disclose the eight regional centers where they were being stored, citing “safety reasons” and saying they consulted the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is a precious vaccine. We don’t want to create any security risk,” said Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of the state’s Department of Health Services, on December 14 during a virtual news conference.
Since then, thousands of doses of the least fragile vaccine Modern have been sent to the state. It is not known whether most are being stored in hospitals and employee clinics or in centralized centers.
This article was originally published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin COVID-19 vaccine purposely destroyed in hospital; FBI involved