A Texas doctor was charged Thursday with stealing a bottle of Covid-19 vaccine, according to prosecutors.
Dr. Hasan Gokal faces a charge of theft by a public official after authorities said he stole a bottle containing nine doses, the Harris County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. The alleged incident occurred on December 29, when he was working at a vaccination post in Humble, about 20 miles north of Houston.
Gokal was fired after a coworker he confided in reported him to supervisors, according to the office.
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Prosecutors said Gokal “disregarded county protocols in place to ensure that the vaccine was not wasted, but administered to vulnerable populations and frontline workers on a waiting list.”
“He abused his position to put his friends and family in front of people who had gone through the legal process to be there,” public prosecutor Kim Ogg said on Thursday in a statement. “What he did was illegal and he will be held accountable to the law.”
In a statement to NBC News, Gokal’s lawyer, Paul Doyle, said his client was a “dedicated public servant who ensured that doses of the Covid-19 vaccine that would otherwise expire would go into the arms of people who served criteria for receiving it “
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“Harris County would have preferred Dr. Gokal to waste vaccines and is trying to undermine this man’s reputation in the process of supporting this policy,” he said.
During a news conference on Friday, Doyle said the Modern Covid-19 vaccine came in a bottle with 11 to 12 doses. When a bottle is opened, the medical team has six hours to administer the vaccine.
Doyle said Gokal had 10 remaining Covid-19 vaccines after opening a new bottle for a patient who appeared around 6:30 pm on December 29.
“Dr. Gokal now faces the question of what to do with it, ”he said. “He started looking for qualified individuals to vaccinate. He looked first at the team that was still outside, most of whom had already received the vaccine, and then at the police. “
Doyle said that Gokal started looking for acquaintances who knew people who qualified for the vaccine, including a group of elderly people, a “93-year-old bedridden woman” and an “86-year-old woman with dementia”.
At least one dose was administered to Gokal’s wife an hour before her expiration date, said Doyle. His wife qualified for the vaccine, according to the lawyer. No other relative or friend received the vaccine.
Doyle added that there was little internal guidance on what to do with the remaining doses. He said the Harris County Public Prosecutor relied exclusively on the Harris County Department of Public Health account without interviewing his client.
The Harris County District Attorney’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday.
A spokesman for the Harris County Department of Public Health said only that the agency “took immediate action to learn of the improper handling of vaccines, to include the alert to authorities.”
The department declined to comment further due to the ongoing investigation.
Doyle said that Gokal intends to plead not guilty. It is unclear when he should appear in court.
