Offering these doses was “against the protocol,” said the governor.
Members of the public in Kentucky were fortunate to be vaccinated against COVID-19 on Christmas Eve, when local Walgreens stores had extra doses that would have expired.
The overdoses were offered to local first responders, Walgreens employees and Louisville and Lexington residents, many of whom were over 65, according to Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso.
“COVID-19 vaccines are not available to the general public at this time,” said Caruso in a statement. “We experienced an isolated situation in which the quantity of vaccine doses requested by the establishments exceeded the real need”.
In a telephone interview with ABC News, Andrew Masterson said that he and his wife were fortunate to have received the vaccine by chance – and acknowledged that there are many vulnerable Americans still waiting to receive the vaccine.
“We were in the right place at the right time,” said Masterson. “I felt I needed to take this opportunity. But I feel very guilty. We were lucky.”
He and his 16-year-old son were shopping last minute on Christmas Eve when a friend who happened to be at Walgreens discovered that extra doses were available. The friend immediately thought of the Mastersons – particularly Melissa, Andrew’s wife, who is battling breast cancer, stage IV, for the second time.
“We ran over there, they wrote down our names, we had to get our doctor’s approval to make sure it was okay for Melissa to take her chemo medication – we waited a little bit – but then she sat down, took the injection, and five minutes later we were walking out the door, with hope, “said Masterson.
Melissa was in remission until January, when the cancer came back. It had spread to his spine. She started chemotherapy in April – what Andrew remembers as a scary time: chemotherapy can weaken the immune system, and Melissa was getting it right when the pandemic gained momentum. When hospitals restricted their visiting protocols, there was a time when Andrew was unable to visit her.
Andrew, a local restaurant owner who said he also had a contract with Meals on Wheels, helping to pack and deliver the meals for the elderly, was concerned about taking the virus home to his wife – or to one of his high meal containers risk.
Kentucky is in Phase 1A of the vaccine distribution, which includes only health professionals and people in long-term care facilities. The state is expected to move to Phase 1B in February, according to the governor.
Although neither Andrew nor Melissa are in the ‘1A’ vaccine group, when he had the opportunity, he felt they needed to take advantage.
Even after receiving the first dose of the vaccine, the Mastersons do not plan to let their guard down. “We still have an obligation to the general public to protect our neighbors and friends,” said Andrew. “Even if we are safe or immune – we will pretend we are not.”
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said on Monday that pharmacies in both cities received extra doses of the vaccine after vaccinating at long-term care facilities and that offering these doses to the public was against the protocol. It was not clear how many non-priority people received vaccines.
“I don’t think it was intentional, and we have to understand that in such a big undertaking these mistakes are going to happen,” said Beshear. There are procedures in place to ensure that “the right thing happens next time,” he added.
During an interview with “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, spoke about the difficulty that local health departments are having to distribute the vaccine without a national plan or funding.
“The biggest problem is taking the vaccine from the states into people’s arms,” said Jha.
“We are starting to see health departments that are really overwhelmed, trying to figure out how to get all these vaccines on people and it is going much slower than I think the federal authorities thought would happen.”
William Gretsky of ABC News contributed to this report.
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