- Dr. Hasan Gokal was fired after delivering 10 expiring doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
- Gokal said he spent six hours trying to find people who wanted the injection.
- The Houston prosecutor’s office later accused him of theft.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
On December 29, Dr. Hasan Gokal was preparing to end the first day of Houston’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign when a last person drove to take a dose before the site was scheduled to close.
It was about 6:30 pm and it was dark outside. The vaccination site was remote, about an hour outside of Houston, in the suburb of Humble.
“There were no lights, no cars anywhere. So we had to wait another half hour to finish things at 7 pm. That was when we were scheduled to stay until,” said Gokal. “At 6:45 pm, about 15 minutes before the shutdown, we had one more person passing on the vaccine. That was the problem at the time, we had made all the vaccines and all the vaccines. Now, one more person appears and we have to open a new vial of the vaccine. “
Gokal says he had to pierce a new vial of Moderna’s vaccine, which meant he had six hours to use all 11 doses before they were discarded. However, with 15 minutes to close, no one else appeared.
One open vaccine bottle with no time to waste
He asked the 20 people who work at the site, all of whom said they were already vaccinated or were not interested, said Gokal. The emergency medical staff on the scene had already left and only a few policemen remained. They also had the vaccine or were not interested.
Gokal contacted the medical director for this program and a director at the Harris County Public Health Agency to warn them that he would look for people to vaccinate. He said that they both gave him the green light.
“I asked her. I said, ‘Hey, look, I still have those doses. Do you have anyone I can put them in?’ And she was considering her own family herself, “Gokal told the Insider of the director of the Harris County Public Health Agency, whose name he did not disclose.
A week before the vaccination campaign, Gokal said he was on a conference call where state health officials advised those working on vaccinations not to waste the vaccine and, if a bottle is opened, they should look for the next category of people. eligible until doses are used.
Gokal said it was emphasized that no dose should be missed.
Unfortunately, no family member of the director of the Harris County Public Health Agency was eligible, and Gokal started looking for acquaintances to see if he could find someone who was qualified.
Gokal lived an hour away from the vaccination site. The acquaintances lived closer to him than to the vaccination site, so he prepared to drive home.
At that point, Gokal said, he had two options: leave the doses in place, where they would expire and be thrown out the next day, or spend the rest of the night trying to place them in people’s arms.
“So I decided to start trying to find people who might be eligible. And I remember that I’ve been up since 4 am, working all day. So, I was defeated and … I really didn’t want to do that, but I knew about importance of doing that. I wouldn’t like it if I didn’t try to get the right people, “he told Insider.
Gokal started calling acquaintances. “So I said, I’m basically looking for people I thought they could have – family members who are elderly or sick or who can work in doctors’ offices or that sort of thing, who would be eligible for the next level, which would be 1B. So, I managed to find 10 people who said, ‘OK’. “
Home calls
When he got home, Gokal said that two of the people he was supposed to vaccinate were waiting, one person in his 60s and the other in his 70s. He gave them the injection before leaving for another house.
At the next house, he says he vaccinated four people. Someone in her 90s and someone in her 80s who had dementia. He also vaccinated his two caregivers, both in their 60s.
Then Gokal said he went to the home of an elderly woman whose neighbor had called him and said that she would qualify for the vaccine. She took it.
With only three shots left, Gokal said he drove back home, where he expected the final three people to find him. Two of them were already there. One was in his 50s and worked in a doctor’s office and therefore had more exposure, and the other was an individual in their 40s who cared for a child with medical problems who was wearing a respirator. Gokal gave them his shots.
“She was the only caregiver. She did not allow anyone else to come into the house because of the fear of bringing COVID and she was afraid that if she did, her children would not survive this,” said Gokal of the woman in his care. 40 years.
After midnight, the last individual, an elderly man, who was supposed to get the vaccine, called Gokal and said it was too late for him to get out of the car and he would find another time to get vaccinated.
With a few minutes to go, Gokal turned to his wife, who had a lung problem. She was suspicious if it was a good idea.
“I asked my wife why she came in and out of the hospital in the past 18 months with pulmonary sarcoidosis, which left her breathless all the time. She is taking medication for this. And our own doctor said to her: look, if you had chance of getting the vaccine, you must do it because you have an extremely high risk. “Gokal said.
He said he was working in a hospital at the start of the pandemic, but switched to the public health function so he was less at risk for her.
“When COVID started and I was working in the ER at the time, I didn’t come home for a whole month, I was going to live in a hotel because I was afraid to take him home for her,” he said.
The next day, Gokal went to the doctor’s office and presented the 10 immunization forms and told his team how he handled the remaining doses. He said that nobody said anything.
A quick change of events
Eight days later, Gokal was called and fired by the human resources department. Before that, he hadn’t heard anything about the incident.
“What they told me was … they asked, ‘Did you take this and give it to friends and family?’ I said, ‘Well, guys, you know what I did, I took them and I found people to give them to whoever was eligible so they weren’t wasted and my wife was one of them’, “Gokal told of his interactions with a unidentified public health official. “He said, ‘Oh, you admitted, you’re fired.'”
Gokal was informed that he violated the protocol, but according to his lawyer, Paul Doyle, these protocols have never been clarified.
Doyle said he contacted the public prosecutor’s office and asked what protocols they were referring to in the case against Gokal.
“They answered me [and said] this was a hurried event and they had no written protocols in place at the time, and they did not have a written waiting list, “said Doyle.” So, of course, my answer was and all this in an email: ‘what theory are you presenting in this case to a grand jury? And is there something I’m missing? ‘And the answer is no. “
Gokal said he should have brought the shots back to the office or thrown them out. He said he was questioned by a public health official whose name he did not disclose about why the vaccinees’ names sounded “Indians”. He said officials were concerned that they might be accused of administering the vaccine inappropriately.
Two weeks after Gokal’s resignation, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said she was accusing him of theft.
“He abused his position to put his friends and family in front of people who had gone through the legal process to be there,” said Ogg in a statement. “What he did was illegal and he will be held accountable to the law.”
These charges were dismissed by criminal court judge Franklin Bynum for lack of probable cause. The Texas Medical Association and the Harris County Medical Society also issued statements in support of Gokal, emphasizing that healthcare professionals should not waste any doses of the vaccine.
Gokal said the prosecutor’s office never tried to contact him to hear his version of the story. He said that at one point he was accused of stealing more vials of vaccines, but a recount of the available ones proved that none were missing.
“Basically, they didn’t want to talk to him. They didn’t follow up until after they filed a sealed complaint along with the press release with all sorts of facts that were absolutely misrepresented,” said Doyle. “It was a kind of bizarre rush to fire him and then the rush to follow up to bring the charges against him, without anyone understanding what happened.”
The DA’s office did not respond to Insider’s requests for comment.
No regrets
Although Gokal says he would not change what he did, the consequences of his dismissal and subsequent criminal charges have traveled the world and impacted his family.
“On a very personal level. I’m fine with being attacked and having to defend myself. I’m fine. That’s part of what happens, but when it started hurting my loved ones, it was the first time that I started crying in my eyes, because I realized that it wasn’t just me; it was having an impact on everyone, so it has been very difficult, “said Gokal, explaining that family members in Singapore, Pakistan, Dubai and several other places have started receiving calls about the news.
Harris County Public Health has also contacted the medical council to initiate an investigation for unethical behavior. The department said it had no comments in response to a call from Insider.
On Tuesday, the Texas Medical Board dismissed the cases against Gokal. On March 9, the governing body sent him a letter saying that he “appeared to have administered doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to duly consenting patients, in the category of eligible patient, and they received doses that would otherwise have been wasted”, said a press release.
Gokal is out of a job until all of this is resolved. However, he spent his time volunteering at a charity clinic.
“I am donating my time to go there to see patients and take care of them while I can,” said Gokal.
“It gives me joy. Either way, this is part of what I have always done.”