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The initial organization, founded by a 22-year-old Drexel student, ran the city’s first COVID-19 mass vaccination clinic. But after the organization changed its data privacy practices, the city severed ties.
Photography by Flavio Coelho / Getty Images
The city’s health department is cutting its vaccine partnership with Philly Fighting COVID with immediate effect, spokesman Jim Garrow said in a statement late on Monday.
The group, which was founded during the start of the pandemic by Andrei Doroshin, a 22-year-old Drexel student, was selected by the city to run the first mass vaccination clinic at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where nurses administered doses of vaccine for almost 7,000 health professionals in the city’s priority group 1A.
But, Garrow said in an email, the health department recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID has quietly changed its corporate status from nonprofit to for-profit, as reported by WHYY for the first time. In addition, the group created a website where people can submit personal information, including name, age, address and medical conditions, and record their interest in receiving the vaccine.
The website was made to look official; it included a stamp from the City Council, although the City had nothing to do with the place and the city had no access to the data that the Philadelfines sent there. Now, Garrow said, the city has recently learned that Philly Fighting COVID “has updated its data privacy policy in a way that could allow the organization to sell data collected through the PFC pre-registration website.”
Contacted by phone, Doroshin said he personally informed the health department of his group’s move to for-profit status and did so to facilitate fundraising and the continuity of the clinics’ operation. He also claimed that the privacy policy that appears on Philly Fighting COVID’s vaccination interest page is not really that of his organization; instead, he said, it is the privacy policy of the company that manages the database. “We don’t actually own the data,” said Doroshin. “I am surprised that people think we would be selling data or doing something crazy like that.” He added: “I am about to cry now. … We just want to help people ”.
Garrow said the city is not aware of any attempt to sell user data collected on the site. But, he added, “as a result of these concerns, along with the unexpected interruption of PFC testing operations, the Department of Health has decided to stop providing PFC vaccine.”
The health department has the names and contact information of everyone who received the first dose of the PFC vaccine. Garrow said the city will contact each person to schedule a second dose at a clinic without PFC.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
