A pharmacist at a Wisconsin hospital was arrested and charged with intentionally removing more than 500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine from refrigeration last week, knowing that the vaccines would be useless and that the people who received them would think they were protected against the virus when they were not, the Grafton, Wisconsin police department said on Thursday.
The hospital administered some of the doses before realizing they were damaged, the hospital’s system said.
The pharmacist, a man whose name has not been released by the police, was arrested on first-rate charges for recklessly risking security, tampering with a prescription drug and criminal property damage, all crimes. He is being held in Ozaukee County Prison.
It was not clear what his motive may have been. The Grafton police department is investigating the incident together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Food and Drug Administration, the department said.
The hospital system, Advocate Aurora Health, has been evolving what has happened since it first discovered on December 26 that vaccines were removed from the refrigerator overnight.
First, he said the doses were dropped accidentally. Then, on Wednesday, he said the pharmacist admitted to intentionally removing the vials. On Thursday, in a video call with reporters, Jeff Bahr, president of the Aurora Health Care Medical Group, said the pharmacist admitted taking the bottles out of the refrigerator on two consecutive nights – Christmas Eve and Day – and that the hospital had administered 57 of the doses before realizing how long they had been at room temperature.
Dr. Bahr said there is no evidence that the pharmacist has tampered with the vaccine in any way other than removing it from the refrigerator, and that the pharmacist is no longer an employee of the hospital system.
Dr. Bahr said the hospital consulted Moderna, the pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccines, and was assured that the spoiled vaccines would not harm individuals who received them. But because the vaccine’s mRNA molecules break down quickly at room temperature, the doses “have become less effective or ineffective,” said Bahr.
He said the 57 people who received the vaccine were notified. He did not say what the hospital planned to do about the new doses for these people, who are likely to be health care workers, although Dr. Bahr did not say specifically.
The hospital does not believe the incident resulted from any negligence or loophole in its protocols for managing doses of the vaccine, said Bahr.
“It was clear that this was a situation involving a bad actor, as opposed to a bad process,” he said.
Wisconsin experienced a devastating increase in coronavirus cases in the fall, and was sometimes the hardest hit state in the country in terms of its population. Since then, transmission has slowed somewhat, but the state is still reporting about 39 new cases per day for every 100,000 people. At least 5,195 Wisconsin residents died.
As of Tuesday, the state had received 156,875 doses of vaccines and administered 47,157 doses, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.