A Wisconsin hospital pharmacist was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of sabotaging more than 500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine by deliberately removing them from the refrigerator to spoil, medical and police officials said. The pharmacist, an employee at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, when 57 vials of vaccine were found left out of cold storage earlier this week has already been fired, but has not been publicly identified, officials said. Each bottle contains 10 doses. Almost 60 of the doses in question were administered before hospital officials determined that the drug had been left unrefrigerated long enough to render the vaccine ineffective. The remaining 500 doses were then discarded. Moderna Inc, a maker of the vaccine, assured the hospital that receiving an injection of any of the doses removed from refrigeration poses no safety problem, except leaving the recipient unprotected from COVID infection, said Dr. Jeff Bahr, president of Aurora Health Care Medical Group. Neither Aurora Health nor the law enforcement authorities offered any possible reason for the sabotage. Those who received ineffective doses have been notified and will need to be revaccinated. The episode means that immunization will be delayed for 570 people who should have already received their first injection of the two-dose vaccine. In an interview with the online press on Thursday, Bahr said there was no evidence that the pharmacist tampered with the vaccines in any other than removing them from the refrigerator, or that any other doses were changed. Grafton police said in a statement that the pharmacist “knew that spoiled vaccines would be useless and that people who received the vaccines would think they were vaccinated against the virus when in fact they were not.” The incident occurred amid research of public opinion showing widespread skepticism about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, which received emergency use authorization by federal regulators just 11 months after the virus emerged in the United States. Reluctance to take the vaccine was expressed by some health professionals who are among those designated as first in line to receive it. stipulated after the lost vials were discovered on December 26, the pharmacist said it was an inadvertent error, but during further examination of the matter he admitted on Wednesday to have intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration, hospital officials said. The individual, residing in Grafton on the outskirts of Mi lwaukee, was arrested on Thursday and charged at Ozaukee County Prison on charges of recklessly putting security at risk, tampering with a prescription drug and criminal property damage, police said.
