Northern medical graduate fired, charged in Texas after giving Covid vaccines about to expire

A Texas doctor who graduated from Upstate Medical University in Syracuse was fired and charged with theft after administering vaccines to Covid that would have expired in a few hours, according to The New York Times.

The doctor, Hasan Gokal, 48, immigrated from Pakistan to the United States as a boy and graduated in medicine in the interior of the state. He worked in hospitals in downtown New York before moving to Texas in 2009, according to the Times.

He worked in hospitals before becoming medical director of the Covid response team for Harris County Public Health in the Houston area earlier this year.

The county ran a vaccine clinic in December aimed primarily at emergency workers. Gokal was there to supervise, but attendance was small.

At the end of the day, an eligible individual appeared and a worker broke the seal on a new bottle, which contained 11 doses. It was unlikely that enough eligible people would show up at that point to use the remaining doses and Gokal was determined not to waste them, according to the Times.

He finally tracked enough people through his phone’s contact list. Recipients included an 80-year-old woman with dementia, a 60-year-old man with health problems, a mother with a son who uses a respirator and Gokal’s own wife, who has a lung problem that makes her vulnerable to Covid.

Although he informed his supervisors about what he had done at the time and filled out all the proper paperwork, he was fired several days later, according to the Times. Authorities said he should have returned the doses to the county or thrown it away.

He was later charged with theft, although a judge dismissed the case as unfounded. The local district attorney plans to present the case to a grand jury.

Gokal’s lawyer says his client acted responsibly, according to the Times.

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