Authorities arrested a suburban pharmacist from Milwaukee on Thursday, suspected of deliberately spoiling hundreds of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by removing it from the refrigerator for two nights.
The Grafton Police Department said the former Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of danger, tampering with a prescription drug and criminal property damage. The department said in a press release that he was in prison. Police have not identified the pharmacist, claiming he has not yet been formally charged.
Its motive remains unclear. Police said detectives believed he knew that the spoiled doses would be useless and the people who received them would mistakenly think they had been vaccinated, when in fact they were not.
Lawyer Aurora Health Care, director of medical group Jeff Bahr, told reporters during a conference call on Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials containing hundreds of doses of the Moderna-National Institutes of Health vaccine from a center’s refrigeration Grafton doctor during the night of December 24th. -25, returned them and then left them out again on the night of 25-26 December. The vials contained sufficient doses to inoculate 570 people.
Grafton police, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, said in a statement that the department, the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration are investigating the case “actively”. Police said they were notified of the alleged violation on Wednesday night.
A pharmacy technician discovered the bottles out of the refrigerator on Saturday morning. Bahr said the pharmacist initially said he had removed the vaccine to access other items in the refrigerator and had inadvertently failed to replace it.
The Modern vaccine is still viable for 12 hours outside the refrigerator, so workers used the vaccine to inoculate 57 people before discarding the rest. Police said the dropped doses were worth between $ 8,000 and $ 11,000.
Bahr said health care workers were more suspicious of the pharmacist as they reviewed the incident. After several interviews, the pharmacist acknowledged on Wednesday that he deliberately removed the vaccine and left it out overnight from December 24th to 25th, returned it to the refrigerator at some point and removed it again overnight from 25th to 26th December December.
Bahr said that this means that the doses that people received on Saturday are practically useless. Moderna told Aurora that there are no security concerns, but the system is monitoring it closely, he said.
Bahr declined to comment on the pharmacist’s motive.
Aurora said she fired the employee and referred the case to the authorities. The statement said nothing about a possible reason for the deterioration.
“We continue to believe that vaccination is our way out of the pandemic. We are more than disappointed that this individual’s actions will result in the delay of more than 500 people in receiving the vaccine, ”said the statement.