The hospital confirmed that several staff outside the frontline of Stanford Medicine received the COVID-19 vaccine over the weekend, just two weeks after Stanford Hospital residents protested the launch of the first vaccine distribution to administrators and doctors. who are not in contact with patients.
Vaccine doses were offered by direct consultation on Saturday and Sunday, the Stanford Daily reported for the first time on Wednesday. Although intended for frontline personnel, “inaccurate information” led to several employees who do not qualify for the vaccine at this stage of implantation, being vaccinated.
“Unfortunately, over the past weekend, inaccurate information about the availability of the vaccine has circulated in our community, leading some ineligible employees to receive the vaccine,” he told Stanford Medicine in part, in a statement emailed to SFGATE.
“Stanford Medicine is currently administering vaccines only to healthcare professionals who deal with patients,” the statement continues. “We have addressed this problem and are confident that we will continue to vaccinate the entire Stanford medical community quickly through an ethical and equitable process.”
The hospital did not respond to follow-up questions about the number of ineligible employees who were vaccinated. Vaccines should only be given to frontline workers “by invitation only,” according to the Stanford Daily.
The “inaccurate misinformation” appeared to stem from a misunderstanding that an “excess” of the vaccine was available for distribution to Stanford Medicine employees; in particular, an official who was not on the frontline who received the vaccine told the Stanford Daily that he had the impression that many vials of the vaccine were defrosted for the crowd expected over the holiday weekend.
Word of mouth of the vaccine being made available to all employees spread from there, according to the report. (It is worth mentioning that the COVID-19 vaccines must be stored in freezers from -80 to -60 degrees Celsius; once thawed, the vaccines must be used within 120 hours, or five days, and cannot be refrozen, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
Questions about how the COVID-19 vaccine was launched among Stanford Hospital officials surfaced on December 18, after residents protested the hospital for distributing the vaccine to administrators and doctors working at home. At the time, a letter to Stanford executives signed by residents said the hospital was distributing the vaccine to 5,000 employees in its first phase; of these, only seven residents and fellows were included.
Stanford Medicine later apologized for its role in the distribution of the vaccine, writing in part that it assumed “full responsibility for errors in the execution of our vaccine distribution plan. Our intention was to develop an ethical and equitable process for the distribution of the vaccine. … We are immediately reviewing our plan to better sequence the distribution of the vaccine. “
The front line and other health professionals in “high-acuity environments” should be the top priority, according to a schedule released by Stanford Medicine on December 23. Frontline workers were scheduled to receive their vaccines from December 17 to 28; hospital, outpatient providers and staff in contact with the patient were the next to receive the vaccines from December 28 to January 8; all other Stanford Medicine employees could then receive the vaccine after 8 January.
On December 23, up to 7,725 Stanford Medicine workers received the COVID-19 vaccine.
SFGATE news editor Amy Graff contributed to this report.