Philadelphia severed ties with a group charged with administering COVID-19 vaccinations after the group quietly changed its status from non-profit to for-profit.
The startup, Philly Fighting COVID, included a group of college students with minimal experience tasked with delivering coronavirus vaccines, leading to extensive logistical problems and accusations of misconduct, according to The Washington Post.
In addition to the group changing its corporate status, reports emerged that it silently changed its privacy policy to allow the sale of personal data and its CEO Andrei Doroshin faced allegations that he had taken extra doses of vaccine for himself, which he denied.
The group’s leadership had no members with medical or public health backgrounds and Doroshin’s own experience involved founding a non-profit organization that “consisted mainly of a Twitter account with many memes, some minor community lobby and a fundraiser with a goal of $ 50,000 that earned $ 684, ”according to Philadelphia Magazine.
The executive team is also almost entirely white at a time when 44% of the black city has a hard time disseminating the shots to its black population. Only 12% of vaccines in Philadelphia have been for black patients so far.
“If anyone was prepared and ready to do this, it was us,” Black Doctors COVID-19 Consortium founder Ala Stanford told the magazine. “I happen to be a doctor for 23 years, longer than some of these children live, but do I need these white children to teach me how to do this?”
Katrina Lipinksy, a registered nurse who volunteered for the organization, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that, in her experience, it was “an operating disaster” that never asked for her credentials before she started vaccinating people. She also said she saw Doroshin put down several doses of vaccine after several elderly people were rejected one day.
The city said on Monday it would cut ties with the group, and health commissioner Thomas Farley said in an interview on Tuesday that it was a mistake to partner with the startup.
Doroshin apologized for “any communication failure” and called the privacy policy change “an error”.
“We never sell and we will never sell, share or disseminate any data we collect, as it would be a violation of HIPAA rules,” he said, referring to the federal law that protects private medical data, according to the Post.
The Hill contacted Philly Fighting COVID for comment.