A hospital worker outside Milwaukee deliberately spoiled more than 500 doses of the coronavirus vaccine by removing 57 bottles from a pharmacy refrigerator, hospital officials announced on Wednesday, while local police said they were investigating the incident with the hospital. help from federal authorities.
Initiating an internal review on Monday, hospital officials said they were initially “led to believe” that the incident was caused by “inadvertent human error”. The bottles were removed on Friday and most were discarded on Saturday, with only a few still safe to administer at Aurora Medical Center in Grafton, Wisconsin, according to an earlier health care statement. Each bottle contains enough for 10 vaccinations, but can remain at room temperature for only 12 hours.
Two days later, the official acknowledged that he “intentionally removed the vaccine from refrigeration,” the Aurora Health Care system said in a statement on Wednesday.
The employee, who was not named, was fired, Aurora Health said. His statement did not address the worker’s motives, but said that “competent authorities” were promptly notified.
On Wednesday night, police in Grafton, a village of about 12,000 people 20 miles north of Milwaukee, said they were investigating with the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration. In a statement, the local police department said it learned of the incident from security services at Aurora Health Care’s corporate office in Milwaukee. The system serves eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and includes 15 hospitals and more than 150 clinics, according to its website.
Leonard Peace, an FBI spokesman in Milwaukee, declined to comment on the Bureau’s involvement, but said of the episode: “We are aware of that.” The FDA was also aware, said a spokeswoman, Stephanie Caccomo, who likewise refused to address the existence of an investigation. She directed the questions to the hospital.
Jeff Bahr, president of the Aurora Health Care Medical Group, was scheduled to provide an update on the incident on Thursday afternoon.
Tampering will delay the inoculation of hundreds of people, Aurora Health officials said, in a state where 3,170 new cases were reported and 40 people died on Wednesday from covid-19, the coronavirus disease, according to the coroner. coronavirus from The Washington Post.
“We are more than disappointed that the actions of this individual will result in more than 500 people being delayed in receiving the vaccine,” the health system said in a statement.
Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University and an authority on antipathy towards vaccines, said the incident will prompt doctors to reassess who has access to vaccines, even among their own employees.
“Hopefully, this is an isolated case, but I am sure that places will now have to think about whether those who deal with vaccines are reliable, as well as ensuring that supplies are under camera surveillance,” she said.
Security is central to state planning, officials say. When Wisconsin started receiving vaccine shipments earlier this month, the health department did not disclose the eight regional centers that received most of the materials.
Julie Willems Van Dijk, deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, said at a news conference on December 14, “This vaccine is precious. We don’t want to create any security risks. ”She said the state consulted the Department of Homeland Security about the plans.
On Thursday, designated Health Secretary Andrea Palm said her department has been working with Aurora Health employees as they “investigated the situation, reviewed their processes and implemented improvements.”
“It is disappointing that any covid-19 vaccine has been wasted in Wisconsin,” she added in a statement to The Washington Post.
The Wisconsin incident occurs as states continue to struggle with an uneven implementation of the first doses of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, which were approved less than a month ago and prioritized for healthcare professionals, residents and long-term care facilities. So far, distribution has fallen far short of federal projections, raising doubts about whether the outgoing government will meet its revised target of 20 million vaccines distributed by the end of the year.
On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 12.4 million doses of the vaccine were distributed in the United States, but only 2.6 million of them were administered. (This means that only 1 in 125 Americans received the first dose of the vaccine.) Officials at the Trump administration said these figures are lagging behind the actual rate of vaccination, which also promised to accelerate from next week.
The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, the first two regimens to obtain regulatory approval for emergency use, are two-dose protocols with intricate logistical requirements. Moderna’s vaccine does not require subarctic temperatures, like the Pfizer product, but needs to be kept cool. It can be stored in a freezer temperature for six months, says the company, and kept in regular refrigeration for 30 days. It can be kept at room temperature for only 12 hours, and cannot be refrozen after defrosting.
Complex storage requirements are among the reasons why state officials are begging suppliers to administer the vaccine quickly as soon as it is received. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, D, accessing Twitter last week to celebrate the start of shipments of Moderna’s vaccine, said it represented “another step forward in the fight against this pandemic”
In its original statement on Monday, Aurora Health said it had successfully vaccinated around 17,000 people in the previous 12 days. His initial review, he said, found that the 57 bottles were simply left out overnight by the employee after “being temporarily removed to access other items”.
The health system apologized, saying, “We are clearly disappointed and we are sorry that this happened.”